It is increasingly easier to shop on Facebook's platform. Today, the company began rolling out a "shopping" tab on the app where users can browse & purchase items from brands they follow.

This is the latest development in Facebook's move to offer shopping directly, rather than simply acting as a intermediary between merchants and customers. There's much more planned for Instagram's shopping features, as described by Sarah Perez:

An upcoming Instagram Shop experience will look a little different. Instagram had said in May it will feature collections from @shop, alongside selections from the user’s favorite brands and creators. These shopping options are laid out on the screen in a more intentional manner, with bigger images at the top of the screen, following by a scrollable row of brands, and then personalized content below in a “Suggested For You” section.

With Apple's moves to limit tracking of users, Facebook is more incentivized to build ecommerce into their platform. This allows Facebook to capture additional data about the transaction, which in turn should help provide a better discover experience for users, while also allowing Facebook to process the transaction and capture some of the fees currently taken by third parties.

This is the latest move and far from the end of building digital commerce into Facebook's multitude of platforms.