The app that pays you to watch shopping videos
Social commerce is still having its moment in the sun + more industry headlines
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Hello! I was more or less bedridden the last week and change with the flu, then bronchitis, leaving the confines of my humidified room to do only the bare minimum tasks of my daily life (taking care of a toddler). I’m generally feeling better but my brain has been the last thing to turn back on, so instead of a more analytical singular trend piece this week, I rounded up a few headlines and items that have caught my eye lately.
Share any thoughts, questions, or newsy items I missed in the comments or my DMs.
The social shopping app Flip has seen a huge surge of users since TikTok’s day in the dark almost two weeks ago. It’s reportedly driven 250,000 new user sign ups per day since the beginning of January and was in the top 10 spot in the Apple app store as of last week (it’s down to 16 as of this Tuesday). Flip has a similar look to the shopping side of TikTok, but it incentivizes all users to shop, share their reviews in a short-form video, then watch more reviews, creating an endless loop of shoppertainment. There are monetary rewards at every step of the journey; for example, if I watch 10 videos a day for 10 consecutive days, I’ll earn $150, which I can redeem as shopping credit in the app. It also launched a creator fund last week that seeks to provide up to $100 million worth of equity to participants over the next five years.
I’m curious to see if Flip has staying power—the value of creators’ earnings from the fund certainly depends on it—or if it will quietly fade away when the buzz about TikTok alternatives dies. It’s raised $236 million to date and is valued at $1.1 billion, but I’m generally wary about the scalability of apps that are centered around monetary rewards. I know a lot of early-stage apps emphasize rewards to drive new users, and I think Flip can thrive without them if its content and recommendation algorithm improves, and if it can continue to grow its retailer base and product catalogue. The content I was served, a mix of shopping and non-shopping videos, was pretty mind-numbing, and not in a good way. I like that it has higher retailer standards than TikTok, making it feel a bit more trustworthy. According to Modern Retail, it onboards about 150 retailers per month—its current roster includes brands like The Ordinary, AGolde, Thule, and Samsung—and it received more than 700 brand applications in December but rejected most of them for being “direct from factory” or selling low-quality “gizmos and gadgets” (aka most of what you see on TikTok Shop). Personally, I’m going to hang around Flip to garner enough rewards to replace my broken Hawkins New York pasta bowls.
Live shopping could be just what luxury e-commerce needs. According to the Business of Fashion, TikTok’s uncertainty isn’t stopping the live shopping boom, as more brands embrace it as a conversion tool. The article mentioned how the bag brand Parker Thatch has weekly livestreams on Instagram and YouTube hosted by the founders (see last week’s here). I generally associate live shopping with the cheap and random gizmos and gadgets of TikTok, but it actually makes a ton of sense in the luxury fashion and accessory space where consumers need more than a few images of a product to make a purchase decision. Live shopping also builds a sense of community, nurturing a level of engagement that further helps drive conversions. Parker Thatch’s bags are expensive but not truly in the luxury price category (most are in the $400-$800 range), but luxury e-commerce players can take a cue from its strategy of recreating an in-store shopping experience on live video by showing the product in use, spending time with customers, and answering their questions.
The affiliate and influencer marketing platform ShopMy announced last week that it had raised $77.5 million in a Series B funding round, valuing the platform at just over $400 million. It’s still not much compared to industry leader LTK, which is valued closer to $2 billion, but still, its momentum is further proof that influencer marketing is on a tear. It plans to use the investment to expand beyond beauty, fashion, and skin care into wellness, maternity & family, and food & beverage, and to expand its advertiser base internationally. I’m excited by the expansion into new categories, as I’ve found it to be too limited to fashion and beauty.
In one of many ways to lure creators to its platform, Facebook is now displaying affiliate links more prominently on Reels, photos, and text posts. I wouldn’t drastically change my social strategy to post more on Facebook were I an individual creator or a larger publisher, but I’d definitely take advantage of the new capability if I had the assets and audience and wanted to gather more data points on social commerce conversion rates. Facebook seems like a low-risk place to test things these days. The question is if Meta will bring the functionality to Instagram, where it’s historically been quite precious about affiliate linking.
Some brands have seen traffic spikes from Google Gemini and ChatGPT search recommendations. Modern Retail spoke to a few, including the period care brand Viv, which discovered that people were asking the AI tools about toxins in tampons and searching for sustainable period products, ultimately leading them to the brand’s blog. The brand saw a 400% monthly traffic spike, and calculated that sales from that traffic jumped by 436% (that growth indicates a low base to start…) Inclusion in an AI recommendation query is certainly a powerful organic traffic driver and I can see why brands would get excited by it, but there’s no visibility into how to optimize your site for such tools in the way there is with traditional search engines. Don’t get sucked into writing blog posts or product descriptions that you think will get picked up by a channel you have no control over—just write for your customers! Chances are content that’s optimized for them with nuanced product information and price details will get picked up by Gemini or ChatGPT; the difference is you’re optimizing for your user, not a black box.
Plus a few relevant reads from around Substack:
wrote about fashion writer ’s live shopping event Neverworns Live, which streamed simultaneously on Instagram, Substack, and Whatnot. She noted that Versace hired Satenstein in the fall to host a livestream around the launch of a new bag, so maybe luxury retailers are catching on. (Are You Ready to QVC Your Life?) wrote about visual search and the opportunity it presents for brands, particularly in the resale market. I use Google Lens all the time in my shopping journey, often taking pictures of bags or shoes I see people wearing to look up the brand. I’m not sure if that’s a socially acceptable thing to do but now you know. (A Picture’s Worth 1000 Search Items)That’s all for today! Here are some past posts you may have missed:
Can Pinterest become a leader of social commerce in a TikTok-less America?
A look at Pinterest's tools and efficacy as a commerce player.
How TikTok became the social platform to finally crack commerce
And can social commerce can continue to grow in the U.S. without it?