Your Reels Are Now a Mall
Vol: 235 - From “link in bio” to “link in literally everything”
HelloZ
Hi friendZ! Welcome back to Extremely Online, where the vibes are curated, the lighting is golden hour, and now, apparently, every scroll is a shopping trip. Meta has decided that what your casual little doomscroll was really missing was 30 separate opportunities to buy things mid-video.
Apparently, Instagram and Facebook are rolling out affiliate links inside Reels. Not in bio. Not in comments. Not in that one Linktree you haven’t updated since 2022 (shame on you). Inside the content itself. Tap the lip gloss. Tap the chair. Tap the emotional support Stanley cup. Welcome to the FCKD future, where your feed isn’t just content, it’s a clickable catalog.
OMFG What Does This Mean?
For years, creators have been playing 4D chess with monetization options that included:
“Link in bio!!!”
“Comment ‘LINK’ and I’ll DM you”
“It’s in my LTK but also my ShopMy but also my Amazon storefront but—”
Totally outdated, but remember the “Swipe Up!!!!” ??
Meta looked at that chaos and said: absolutely not, we’ll take it from here. So now, creators can drop up to 30 products in a single Reel, viewers can tap and buy instantly, and there are no middlemen for miles around. There’s no friction. There’s no escape. We’re done for. The influencer funnel has been flattened into a single tap. RIP to link-in-bio startups. It was a good run.
But do you know what’s really sickkkk? [To be said in the voice of Bethenny Frankel] Meta isn’t even taking a cut (yet). Cute, right? Instead, they’re collecting something way more valuable: hyper-granular data on what you almost bought at 11:47pm. Every hesitation. Every hover. Every “wait do I need this?” Filed away for future you. You know, the one who actually will click. “ISN’T THIS SICKKKK?”
This is Meta going full TikTok Shop. Content (commerce), entertainment (storefront), your attention (monetizable). (Is that a word? I just made it one.) This is all quite dangerously convenient, no? Because the next time you open Instagram “just for five minutes,” you may leave with a ceramic lemon bowl, a $78 “clean” moisturizer, and a vague sense that you’ve been bamboozled gently optimized.
Next paid post will be all about how this affects PR and affiliate marketing and what types of pivots you’ll need to make. Make sure you subscribe! See you in the checkout line!
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Let’s Work Together!
Email me: z@zlatapr.com. Always here for you!
xo
Z.
Wow - looking forward to the next newsletter, Z!!