TikTok showed up in force at Shoptalk last week, and the company was on a mission, although not the one that might have been expected — namely, to convince people that it has a future in the U.S.
Quick side note on that hairy topic: TikTok is presenting the resolution of the years-long battle over its presence and influence in the U.S. as a foregone conclusion (that is, that it’s here stay). However, there was very little discussion about the particulars given the confidential nature of the ongoing negotiations. All Adolfo Fernández, TikTok’s Global Head of Commerce Product Strategy and Operations would tell Retail TouchPoints is that “we’re not worried about the future at all,” and, in fact, he’s “motivated and excited” about what’s ahead for the company in America.
While TikTok executives weren’t able to discuss details like the company’s ownership and data governance, they did want to clarify one really important point — TikTok is not a social media platform, and therefore what happens on the platform is not “social commerce.”
This point was emphasized multiple times by TikTok executives at the event, both on and off the stage. TikTok considers itself, and wants to be known as, an entertainment platform, with “discovery commerce” as the preferred description for the types of transactions that happen within its realm.
TikTok: Not Social Media, Entertainment
Fernández makes a compelling argument for this distinction, which essentially boils down to the fact that the content served to people on TikTok is not based on what your friends on the platform have liked or viewed, but rather what its famously good algorithm thinks you as an individual will like. That means the content you see is not based on or featuring content from your connections, but rather is primarily that of creators — and importantly, users are interacting with the content, not with other users. This, according to Fernández, makes the platform more of a “creator-based discovery engine” than a traditional social media platform.
“The key differentiator of social is you basically interact with different users — with your friends, with your family. [However], on TikTok, the For You page is not based on what your audience is [viewing] or on what your friends have watched; it’s based on what you like and what you engage with, and the more you engage with it, the more you get,” he said. “That’s the key differentiator that we have, and that’s the reason why we don’t want to put that label on our platform — it fences us in to something that we are not.”
CI&T’s Melissa Minkow thinks this argument holds water: “I’m personally confident that this distinction is why [TikTok] has led to such strong sales for brands,” she posted on LinkedIn, following a session where TikTok’s General Manager of U.S. Commerce Amy Oelkers made a similar argument to that of Fernández. “Consumers don’t feel they’re being sold to at all when scrolling, they’re purely being entertained.”
If Not Social Commerce, then What?
The way shopping has evolved on the platform is evidence of this. As Fernández described it, product strategy (that is, development of features on the platform) are driven by user behavior. So when the #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt hashtag started to crop up organically, that was a very clear indication that users were demanding commerce functionality. Fernández, by the way, swears that hashtag truly was completely organic, something he said even he was surprised to learn when he joined the company two years ago from Google.
“Something this company does phenomenally well is understand user engagement and bring it into our product stack in a matter of three to six months,” he said. “There was a clear signal from the market that people were not coming [to TikTok] just to get entertained, to get educated, to get informed — they actually were also coming to shop.”
Thousands of merchants are now selling on TikTok Shop, and Fernández said that shoppers have tripled every single month since the offering launched in 2023. Not to mention that TikTok Shop has generated financial opportunity for millions of creators through its affiliate-based sales model. And as Minkow pointed out, brands are seeing real traction in their investments on the platform, whether they’ve set up a Shop or not.
“More and more merchants are coming to the platform,” said Fernández. “From a shopper perspective, user engagement is there. And then the third component, which is, again, what makes us different from other social platforms, is the creator side of things. When you combine that triangle, it’s a very valuable proposition, but it’s not a social [one].”
What’s in a Name? A Tiny Does of Editorial Speculation.
At a certain point, aren’t we just splitting hairs though? Why does it matter so much whether the business world thinks of TikTok as a social media or an entertainment platform?
Perhaps it’s a question of prestige; after all, nothing quite beats the stature of America’s bastions of entertainment like Hollywood and Broadway, even if they are sometimes framed as dinosaurs that have been too slow to move with the times.
Or perhaps it’s more about inherent worthiness in a world where social media has come to be seen as a kind of villain. Is this the beginning of TikTok’s post-purchase-that-hasn’t-happened-yet-but-is-rumored-to-be-imminent strategy? A charm campaign that proves to the world why and how it’s different from much-maligned counterparts like Meta?
Whether TikTok agrees or not, it is difficult to avoid bucketing it in with other similar (although, sure, not the same) platforms wherein consumers engage with one another and the world primarily through a social lens, as opposed to other forms of media where the consumption dynamic is more one-way (TV, theater, publishing, etc.).
We humans, and Americans especially, have a need to categorize and define our world, and for that reason, it’s hard to believe that the company will be successful in convincing anyone that it’s not firmly in the social media category.
An Appeal: Let’s Start Talking About ‘Immersive Commerce’
I think perhaps that the problem is not with how we define TikTok, but rather with how we define the types of commerce that are happening in digital environments today. “Social commerce” is not expansive enough to describe what’s happening on TikTok, or for that matter many other realms of the internet. TikTok likes “discovery commerce,” but that term feels to me a bit too expansive. After all, all commerce happens after some period of discovery, so in that sense, all shopping is discovery commerce.
Walmart has introduced the idea of “adaptive retail” — commerce experiences that adapt to consumers wherever they are, digital or physical — but that term “adaptive” is already so closely aligned with the new-ish category of products designed for the oft-forgotten category of consumers with special needs that it’s hard to disconnect the association in my brain.
I myself prefer “immersive commerce,” also a term I encountered via Walmart, specifically Walmart’s Head of Brand Marketing Innovation Justin Breton, who also shortened it “iCommerce.” To me, this term most acurately describes this exciting new era of shopping, with commerce opportunities integrated into everything we do in our daily life — watching TV, playing video games, scrolling social media or even strolling down the street and seeing something we love that we then find online via visual search. What could be more appealing, for merchants and brands, than finding new ways to actually immerse commerce into the day-to-day life of everyone, everywhere?