Amazon gives up social e-commerce! This feature has been shut down

What kind of feature is this and what is the point for sellers to turn it off?

Amazon Spark does not have a separate app, but is directly integrated into the Amazon mobile app. Amazon will match all users with social content with similar preferences based on their consumption and search habits/hobbies.

In other words, there is no need for buyers to add each other as friends. Amazon will automatically use algorithms to push social content that users may be interested in to their pages.

All of these social content, including posts, likes, comments, and photos, come from Prime members without exception. Although all buyers can see the content they are interested in, only Prime members can create and share it.

In order to achieve classification matching of content and user needs, Amazon will also use some questionnaires and tag selection functions to determine the user's interests when the user first uses Spark.

Although it has similar frameworks and algorithms to various popular social platforms, Spark has been in a half-dead state. Amazon has neither promoted Spark on a large scale nor made drastic improvements to it in the past two years.

At the same time, compared with other social networking platforms that have transformed into e-commerce, Spark, which is based on the Amazon platform, the originator of global e-commerce, seems too utilitarian. Social software with transaction genes innately tends to make users feel repulsive.

Spark's biggest competitor, Instagram, officially launched the in-app purchase function last fall to fully transform into an e-commerce company, which became the last straw that broke the camel's back for Spark.

What can sellers do with this feature? What impact will Spark’s delisting have on sellers? Let’s take a look.

Although few people know about it, there are still sellers who can use Spark to boost their sales.

As a social platform, sellers can use their own Prime membership buyer accounts to promote their products.

And because the algorithm automatically pushes relevant content to the page of interested buyers, it does not depend on the number of friends of the account. Therefore, promotion work on Spark can often achieve good results.

The closure of Spark has undoubtedly blocked a small way for sellers, but Amazon still leaves sellers with a hope. If a user clicks on the Spark function now, they will jump to the following "#FoundItOnAmazon" page.

This page is a prototype of the new social function that Amazon is developing. According to foreign media reports, Amazon will look for new social e-commerce models from Spark and the Interesting Finds function that ran in the early years.

Although Spark has been shut down, we can still look forward to its successor social features. Amazon has developed such social features to encourage buyers to share their purchase experiences.

Therefore, if our sellers maintain and operate Amazon’s own social platform as an extension of product reviews, I believe it will have a significant boost to sales.

However, I still recommend that you prioritize the same as off-site social platforms. First, improve the traffic on the site before considering external traffic and brand maintenance. I have prepared a package of Amazon on-site operation tips for you. Scan the QR code below to get it from me~

PS. If you want to join the seller discussion group, you can also private message me to let me add you to the group

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