Facebook wants your friends to help you shop.

The tech giant is rolling out several new group-focused features in the U.S. just in time for the holidays and testing out live shopping with creators. 

After testing on a small number of groups, Facebook is opening up shoppability to another 100,000 groups. For now, the shop feature is only for public groups with merchandise for sale, but has members link out to another site. Groups can now link a Facebook Shop, Shopify store, or BigCommerce store, to name a few. More than 1.8 billion people use Facebook Groups every month, according to the company.

Another new feature aims to improve product recommendations in groups. Currently, asking for a recommendation ends with reading through a long list of comments. The updated feature will let group members answer and tag the product they are referring to. The recommendation seeker will then get a carousel of product cards that group members recommended. Users can also see and respond to other questions from potential purchasers. 

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Top product recommendations build on those recommendations to aggregate the top products. For example, if someone was looking for the best moisturizer for dry skin, and one cream was getting recommended more than others, that would appear in the top product recommendations. Top recommendations will also show up in a user’s Facebook news feed, meaning the user won’t have to go back to the group to see member answers.

Facebook is also testing live shopping for creators to make it easier for them to show off brand partner products. Brands have already hosted live shopping events, and Facebook is now testing this on creator profiles. 

“We’ve done a lot this year to empower small businesses and big brands with live shopping, so the next chapter is opening it up to creators,” said Yulie Kwon Kim, VP of product management at Facebook.
 

With the holidays around the corner, Facebook is following other social media platforms in giving users the shortest path from discovery to purchase. Pinterest and Snapchat introduced new features to help brands advertise more products and work with creators. Pinterest now has live shopping Fridays on Pinterest TV. TikTok even has suggested searches in its app for “Christmas List 2021” and “Christmas Wish List.”

The new Facebook features lean into the “word of mouth” and trust from friends who have used products. According to an August survey by Tinuiti for its 2021 Holiday Consumer Spending Trends report, 45% of all respondents said they will use Facebook to find holiday gifts. Thirty-nine percent said YouTube influences their holiday gift ideas, and 37% said Instagram was their main source of inspiration.

Facebook will also expand ratings and reviews on products. The reviews will pull from e-commerce sites, provided by Bazaarvoice and Yotpo. Brands can also add photos to product detail pages from users who have tagged them in an Instagram post.