Newsletter
Very few of the companies you see nowadays stick to one thing. A lot of the time, companies dip their toes into different industries in order to expand their appeal. For example, we all know TikTok as the video streaming company. Well, The ByteDance-owned app is also looking to be an e-commerce company. According to a new report, TikTok is working on a feature to add shoppable links to any video.
The company is actually putting a lot of work and effort into becoming an e-commerce company. It’s been working on building its e-commerce business in the States for some time. In fact, TikTok hopes to make $17.5 billion this year by selling products in the U.S. Its plans are to be an alternative to Amazon, giving people a friendly and video-first interface to navigate when looking for new products to buy.
TikTok wants shoppable links in every video
This sounds like the kind of overbearing AI-driven feature that Google would unveil. According to a new report, TikTok wants to let people shop for items from every video on the platform. Right now, creators can promote an item on their video and post a link to where people can buy that item. However, this approach only allows people to buy a limited number of devices.
What the company wants to do is develop a feature that can analyze objects inside of videos and identify them. When it does that, it will be able to find a link to where you can buy that item. So, if a person is using a certain type of iPhone in the video or a certain dress, the technology will be able to analyze that and provide a link to where a person can buy one of those items.
Obviously, this picture will not be 100% accurate, and not every item in a video will be available to buy. However, TikTok will still analyze the video and give you links to similar objects. So, if a user is wearing a certain shirt that cannot be bought anywhere, then TikTok will give you a link to buy a similar-looking shirt.
Right now, this feature is in early testing, so there’s no telling when exactly it’s going to launch to the public. We will just have to wait for it to surface.