you can now use facebook to feed your online shopping habits

online shopping addicts and impulse buyers beware

by lindsey lanquist

Just last month, news broke that Instagram would be adding a “shop now” feature, allowing users to shop directly from their Insta feeds. It seems that social media giant Facebook (who is also, as it happens, the owner of Instagram) is now following suit, adding a “shop now” feature of its own.

The feature is still in the testing phase, and only a small number of users have access to it. But when it becomes a permanent Facebook fixture, users can expect to shop their favorite brands entirely through Facebook—cutting out that annoying extra step of being redirected to the brand’s website. This move also explains why Facebook recently added a money transfer feature (à la Venmo) to its Messenger app.

This is a huge step toward a more social commerce-based economy, and we love seeing our favorite social media sites experiment with ways to make the user experience more, well, user friendly (though we recognize they’re really just trying to make money). That said, we worry about what this shift will do to our wallets. A collaborative social media/commerce environment will only increase the temptation to shop. How can we resist our Facebook and Instagram feeds full of things we want to buy?

All we can say is: Online shopping addicts and impulse buyers, beware.