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Is Amazon replicating TikTok for its shopping experience?
Amazon is said to be testing a feed on its app that enables shoppers to scroll through TikTok-like photos and videos of the products posted by other users. It remains to be seen how far this can influence people into buying products.
Amazon is said to be testing a TikTok-style feed called Inspire, where customers can like, save, and share posts of products, and purchase items directly from the feed, according to Watchful Technologies, an Israeli-based artificial-intelligence firm that analyses apps and has tracked the feature. However, the test doesn't mean that Amazon will roll out the widget to the public in the current form or at all.
Alyssa Bronikowski, an Amazon spokesperson, declined to comment on whether the company will introduce the feature to all its customers. In a statement, Bronikowski said the company is "constantly testing new features to help make customers' lives a little easier." The Wall Street Journal first reported that the e-commerce giant is testing the feature among a small number of Amazon employees.
In the current form, the experimental TikTok-like feed mostly shows photos, said Daniel Buchuk, a researcher with Watchful Technologies. But when the feature is rolled out, Buchuk suspects the feed will be video-heavy as Amazon sellers create content to make it more engaging for customers. There's no timeline for the rollout of the feature just yet but might happen gradually in a phased manner.
Google and Facebook, the two biggest digital advertising platforms already have their own version of TikTok in a bid to keep the eyeballs glued to their services and boost their revenue. As of June this year, Google said YouTube Shorts is attracting more than 1.5 billion logged-in users each month.