Sam Blumenthal

Online shopping sales in 2020 grew 32.4% from 2019 to $791.7 billion, according to figures from the U.S. Department of Commerce. E-commerce ended last year accounting for 14% of all U.S. sales, up from 11% in 2019.

NFTs clearly belong in that tradition. They are digital social objects. Except they are a lot wilder. They don’t live within particular platforms or walled gardens, and aren’t attached to a particular company’s technology or even a specific open standard.

Seven months after adding live video to its social commerce app, Verishop is expanding the feature by building a “pipeline of influencers,” who get paid 10% commission for sales, co-founder and CEO Imran Khan said. It recently brought on Elle magazine as a live video partner.

Founded by Zhang, an early TikTok investor in 2017, Shop LIT Live received a $6 million seed round led by CRCM Ventures in April 2021. It currently has slightly under 100,000 monthly active users, over 10,000 weekly active users and “thousands” of daily active users, said Zhang. Month-to-month user numbers are growing by 40%, he said. The platform... See more