Amazon Discontinues Social Commerce Feature Inspire

Amazon is no longer offering Inspire, the social commerce feature with a video and photo feed of products that it added to its mobile app in 2022.

“Thank you for using Amazon Inspire to discover and shop new products on Amazon,” a page on the company’s website said. “Please note that Inspire is no longer available in the Amazon shopping app.”

The message suggested that shoppers instead use its artificial intelligence (AI) assistant Rufus, the site’s home page, its AI shopping guides, or its search features that use text or images.

An Amazon spokesperson told TechCrunch in a Tuesday report about the shutdown of Inspire: “We regularly evaluate various features to better align with what customers tell us matters most, and as part of that, Inspire is no longer available.”

When testing the app feature with a handful of Amazon employees in August 2022, an Amazon spokesperson told PYMNTS that the company is “constantly testing new features to help make customers’ lives a little easier.”

At that time, Inspire showed customers a video and photo feed of products in a format similar to that of TikTok. The feed included a stream of images and videos of products, with shoppers able to like products, comment on them or buy them immediately.

Amazon unveiled Inspire to a select group of customers in December 2022, with Oliver Messenger, director of shopping, saying short-form video “is an incredibly useful medium of helping people discover and understand products.”

In August 2023, it was reported that Amazon was offering lower-than-market rates to influencers as it sought a steady stream of fresh videos to keep customers engaged.

At a time when creators were typically charging an average of $212 per video for the type of content the company was looking for, Amazon was offering $25 per video featuring two or more of its products, Bloomberg reported at the time.

Amazon beta launched its AI-powered conversational shopping assistant Rufus in February 2024 and made it available to all U.S. customers in the Amazon Shopping app in July.

Rufus answers questions on various shopping needs and products. It is trained on the company’s product catalog, customer reviews, community Q&As and information from across the web.