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Throughout 2021, Walmart has been expanding its support for livestream shopping. It held its first shoppable livestream in December of last year, when it collaborated with TikTok on its Holiday Shop-Along Spectacular event, shortly after its planned investment in the video app fell through. (Walmart was interested in acquiring TikTok after Trump issued an executive order requiring the sale of TikTok's U.S. operations, but Trump's order was blocked by the courts.)

Walmart stated at the time that the first TikTok live event was a success, with 7x more views than expected. It also assisted Walmart in increasing its TikTok follower base by 25%. Though the retailer did not disclose the event's sales revenue, it did hold a second TikTok livestream shopping event a few months later.

While Walmart's bid for TikTok indicated the retailer's interest in live, social e-commerce, the retailer also saw potential outside of TikTok. Walmart has expanded its livestream shopping tests to include other platforms over the last year. This new platform complements Twitter's existing shopping and livestreaming products.

It will include a live broadcast that will stream at the top of a Live Event page, followed by a Shoppable Banner and Shop Tab that will feature the products shown in the livestream. During the event, Twitter users will be able to switch between the "Latest" and "Shop" tabs to preview the products. When customers want to buy something, they are directed to the retailer's website via an in-app browser, where the livestream will continue to play. According to Twitter, this ensures that users do not miss anything during the checkout process.

There's also a text box at the bottom of the Live Event page where customers can tweet about the livestream using a suggested hashtag.

Walmart stated that it was interested in testing Twitter's new capabilities because it consistently sees high returns across top- and middle-of-funnel content on Twitter's platform, making it a natural next step in Walmart's social commerce explorations.

The new Twitter livestream event marks the beginning of Walmart's larger push into live shopping during the 2021 holiday season. Over 30 shoppable livestream events are planned across eight social and media platforms, including BuyWith, BuzzFeed, Facebook, IGN, TalkShopLive, Tasty, Twitter, and YouTube, according to the company. (While TikTok was not listed, Walmart stated that it is working closely with the TikTok team on future shoppable livestreams.)

Following the initial Live Shopping test with Walmart, Twitter says it will begin testing a new way to house merchant onboarding and product catalog management tools via an interface called the "Twitter Shopping Manager," which will simplify the process of getting started with Shopping on Twitter. In addition, it intends to make the Shop Module available to more retailers in the coming months.