TikTok Is Doing Something Very Un-TikTok

Krysten Wagner, a Los Angeles–based TikTok influencer, is defending her decision to promote products on TikTok while wearing a face mask that’s on sale for $50. In a video from June, Wagner squeezes white cream from a shiny blue tube and begins applying it to her taut, perfectly clear skin. “If you’re not familiar,” she says, smearing the cream on her forehead, “you can now shop in the TikTok app.”

For the past few months, she has been experimenting with a new TikTok feature that allows users to buy the products that she mentions in her videos directly through the app by tapping a little label with an orange shopping-cart icon. Not all of her followers have taken to it kindly. In the comments, some complain that these videos hawking products are flooding their feeds with what feels like sponsored content. She assures them that she has no relationship with the brand. She just genuinely likes Summer Fridays’ Jet Lag Mask! If “you really hate” her and don’t want her to get a commission, you have her permission to go buy it at Sephora instead.

TikTok has seemingly become a shopping app. The platform now allows approved retailers to list their products for sale directly on TikTok, where creators like Wagner can promote them and earn a small fee from each purchase. (TikTok, of course, also takes a portion of each sale.) The feature, called TikTok Shop, is still technically in testing mode in the United States, but videos mentioning products you can buy already seem to be sliding into user feeds right next to videos of dogs doing something silly or clips from old movies. Meanwhile, the app’s livestreams have become QVC-like places where sellers are nonstop pitching products to live audiences.

The test hasn’t been entirely smooth: TikTok Shop has seemingly struggled to take off in its early days, a jarring reality for an app that has become known for features that are potent, easy to use, and often mysterious. Powered by a spookily efficient algorithmic feed, TikTok can suck you into an endless flow of content before you even realize what is happening. Even TikTok’s ad experience is discreet and smooth compared with watching ads on other video sites. Now, for once, TikTok is showing its hand. Will users like what they see?

TikTok’s turn to e-commerce, in theory, has the potential to be massive, capable of competing with the likes of Amazon. That’s because the amount of time the average user spends on TikTok is monstrously huge. Because users often encounter new videos through TikTok’s “For You” page, the algorithms that power it can be twisted to show shopping content to all those eyeballs.

The company started testing TikTok Shop last year, first in Indonesia, and later in the United Kingdom. The test finally arrived in the United States in November, beginning with hundreds of retailers, and has since spread to include more shop owners. Some have seen real success with the feature. Allie Mitrovich, a recent college grad in Maryland who sells colorful stickers, bookmarks, and apparel that say things like hot girls read!, told me that the effect of TikTok Shop has been “night and day” for her small business. She’s posted videos of herself holding a thick stack of freshly printed shipping labels, all from TikTok Shop orders.

Even though the e-commerce function hasn’t fully been rolled out globally, the company reportedly aims to sell more than $20 billion worth of items through the portal this year. This is just the beginning of its turn toward shopping: In August, according to The Wall Street Journal, the company will take a page from Amazon’s book and store, ship, and handle logistics for third-party stores selling items on the app.

But TikTok Shop is hardly guaranteed to be successful, even once it’s more than just a test run. A TikTok representative would not share numbers or comment on how TikTok Shop is doing. But a recent report from Insider Intelligence, a market-research company, noted that, though TikTok is a major product-discovery tool, particularly for Gen Z, shopping via livestream and in-app checkouts remain unpopular in the U.S. overall. They advise merchants that TikTok Shop “is a nice-to-have, not a need-to-have,” Jasmine Enberg, a principal analyst for social media at the company, told me over email.

Some fancy things are listed through the feature, but it also is home to a lot of junk. Among the best-selling products I spotted last week were a $12 travel jewelry box and a $10 pink flag that says Taylor Swift for president—merch that is presumably unlicensed, unless Swift is planning something big for 2024. A representative for TikTok declined to answer a question about what “Bestseller” means on the app. Zach Fitch, a campaign strategist at the influencer-marketing firm Ubiquitous, told me that many of the brands he works with are wary of Shop because of the fees that TikTok charges. And the looming potential of a nationwide TikTok ban doesn’t help.

Customers also seem wary. Take the case of Revolve, a fashion retailer that is sort of like a cool-girl online-only Nordstrom. That the merchant’s expensive minidresses and crop tops are on TikTok Shop seems like a coup for the platform. But at least so far, Revolve doesn’t seem to be doing as much business on TikTok Shop: The company’s top-selling item—a blush—has moved less than 2,000 units, according to the Shop listing. (Revolve did not respond to a request for comment.) Wagner, the creator who made the face-mask video, told me that engagement has been mixed: Though one of her affiliate posts did amazing, another had “embarrassingly low” views (“and it was a great video!” she said).

At the moment, TikTok’s shopping features feel “too transactional,” Permele Doyle, the president of Billion Dollar Boy, a creator-marketing company, told me. Getting used to in-app shopping requires a pretty big cultural shift in how we think about social media: Try to imagine Amazon and TikTok merging into a single app that you use every day. So far, other platforms have struggled to integrate commerce in this way. Facebook shut down its live-shopping feature last fall, and earlier this year, Instagram kicked its shopping tab out of the main feed, though the app still supports shopping features. Doyle summarized the overall sentiment toward in-app shopping as “brands want to get there, but the platforms haven’t proved it can work yet.”

TikTok in particular might be ill-suited for shopping. At its roots, TikTok has more of an authenticity culture than Instagram does: Wagner pointed out that the app was initially “so refreshing” because the people going viral weren’t influencers—“just regular people who happened to be famous by accident.” In theory, that could lend them credibility as salespeople. But it could also work against the platform: Why is that random person on TikTok who seemed like a friend now trying to sell things?

Even though consumers and brands are feeling hesitant, if TikTok wants to tilt the algorithmic scale toward e-commerce, it can and probably will. The history of social platforms is littered with examples of powerful tech companies pushing their business priorities even when consumers balk. For now, to see TikTok making its intentions so clear, even as it stumbles, feels strange and new. For so long, TikTok’s growth has seemed limitless, its power frightening. But maybe even all of that can’t get people to buy a $50 face mask.