Dive Brief:

• Carving out its share of the shoppable livestream market, Pinterest on Friday introduced Pinterest TV, a series of live, shoppable episodes featuring content creators. Each Friday, the social media platform will facilitate exclusive, live product drops from the likes of Allbirds, Crown Affair and Outdoor Voices. 
• Starting Monday, Pinterest will release new episodes every weekday at 6 p.m. EDT, with each day focused on a different category, and will record them for users to watch on-demand via iOS and Android. The social network is also setting up a virtual studio where Pinterest producers work with content creators on program development, according to the announcement. 
• Pinterest TV creators can tag products for viewers to buy, as well as access other tools, including a product drawer with prices and product details, product drops and brand collaborations, and a module to offer limited-time discounts. They can also show how many items are left during the show, per the announcement.

Dive Insight:

Pinterest is entering the livestream commerce craze with the launch of Pinterest TV. The video shopping series will include weekly episodes from top creators, including "Tom Tries" with Olympic gold medalist Tom Daley, "Manny Does" with beauty entrepreneur Manny MUA, "Christian On" with fashion designer Christian Siriano and a QVC-style show called "Buy This" with comedian Robyn Schall.

The shows span a variety of topics. For example, Siriano will highlight the most-searched fashion terms on Pinterest, while Daley will learn new skills from grandparents and trade crafting secrets each week. Pinterest noted that some participating creators during the Pinterest TV pilot more than doubled their followers after hosting an episode on the platform.

Outside of its new livestreaming effort, Pinterest has been making a case for itself as a shopping platform for some time now. This year alone, the platform added a shopping list feature that lets users save products and receive price drop notifications, AR try-on tools and shopping recommendations for Idea pins, and more monetization tools for creators. 

Pinterest is not alone in pursuing livestream shopping. The livestream market is expected to reach $25 billion by 2023, according to Coresight Research, and established companies like Facebook, Nordstrom, Macy's and QVC have all made efforts in the space. Livestreaming is also seeing the rise of a crop of startups dedicated to the channel, including Popshop Live, Whatnot, Talkshoplive, Verishop, Ntwrk and ShopShops.

Rumors swirled recently that PayPal would acquire Pinterest, but in late October the payments company said it isn't pursuing an acquisition after all.