LTK Is Taking Its App Beyond Shopping

LTK on Thursday announced sweeping changes to its app, introducing a number of Instagram-style features designed to encourage users to do more than shop.

Among the most notable is the introduction of a “Watch” tab, a hub for video content that allows users to filter videos by a specific region or city. The “Home” tab, meanwhile, will exclusively show posts from the creators users follow in chronological order (both common complaints on Instagram after the app did away with the chronological feed in 2016 and began adding in suggested posts in 2020). The app is also rolling out a “Chat” feature, similar to Instagram’s Broadcast Channels, which function as a one-way group chat for influencers to communicate with followers.

Users are also getting an upgrade: They will also be able to create their own profiles on the app in order to save favorite posts and products and follow friends, so they can see what they’ve saved. (Posting, however, will still be restricted to creators.)

But perhaps the biggest shift is that LTK is now encouraging its creators to post more than just shopping-centric posts to the app. The thought, according to LTK founder and president Amber Venz Box, is that people go to creators for more than just product recommendations, but to see glimpses of their lives — think GRWM or “day in the life” style posts. And in showing more of their lives, followers are more likely to purchase products included in a creator’s post. To make it easier to create those posts, LTK is also building editing tools into its Creator app, which creators use to post to the LTK app.

“I see LTK as creating an entirely new space. We are the creator app,” said Venz Box. “If you want to go find or follow a creator, then we own that lane.”

In revamping its app, LTK is doubling down on what makes it different from its increasingly high-profile competitor ShopMy, which has made inroads in a space that LTK has dominated for over a decade with a slightly different approach to affiliate marketing. Unlike LTK, ShopMy operates no independent app, and instead its users’ online “storefronts” are hosted on a standard webpage, meant to be linked to on platforms like Instagram and TikTok. It also offered more data to brands, and features like “Lookbooks” to automate the gifting process.

ShopMy’s approach has been popular: The platform has attracted 10,000 influencers and 50,000 brands to sign up, not to mention a $77.5 million Series B funding round earlier this year. And the fresh competition has pushed LTK to launch new features, including the LTK Leaderboard, which provides more data to brands about influencer performance, and “Power Gifting,” to facilitate gifting between brands and influencers.

For her part, Venz Box said the impetus for these changes, which LTK has been teasing on social media for weeks, is that social media platforms like TikTok and even Instagram have increasingly moved towards centring on entertainment, leaving a white space for an app that’s solely focused on highlighting creator content.

However, she insists that “I didn’t do this to compete with those [apps]. I built it because they stopped doing a job for our customer.”

For LTK, though, there’s enormous potential if they can convince social media users to come to them first to catch up with their favourite creators. And there’s an incentive for influencers, too: Unlike TikTok and Instagram, LTK only makes money when creators do — their success is linked in a way that they can be confident that LTK will continue to prioritise them, something other platforms haven’t always done. Plus, TikTok’s still uncertain future in the US not only rattled creators, but underscored the importance of diversifying your presence across platforms.

While ShopMy certainly has momentum, Venz Box is confident in LTK’s ability to navigate changes in the influencer marketing space.

“There is a large graveyard of those companies,” she said, referring to LTK competitors that have come and gone. “I am grateful to each one of them, because every time, they have shown us the dark corners that we didn’t know existed in our business and motivated us to write the next chapter.”