After launching IGTV, an on-demand video platform, Instagram is working on another standalone app dedicated to shopping.
The app will allow users to browse collections of goods from merchants that they follow and purchase them directly within the app and it will be called IG Shopping, says The Verge.
It’s uncertain when the app will be launched and the development is still ongoing but it may be cancelled before it is released.
Facebook Chief Operating Officer, Sheryl Sandberg said more than 25 million businesses already have Instagram accounts, and 2 million of them are advertisers. Creating a standalone app would allow the company to provide a dedicated home for an increasingly popular activity on Instagram while also expanding opportunities for revenue.
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Instagram started testing a shopping feature in November in 2016, and rolled it out more broadly in March of last year. Companies can tag posts with individual products, allowing users to shop directly from photos. Instagram is currently testing a feature that lets users shop from Instagram stories.
Shopping would not be the first Instagram feature to be spun out into a standalone app. The company has been testing Direct, a new messaging app, since last December. In June it introduced IGTV, a YouTube competitor that puts vertically shot videos unto their own platform.
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