It makes sense for the company to launch a dedicated shopping experience that can challenge e-commerce platforms like Shopify, seeing as a lot of businesses (especially those catering to a young audience) already maintain an Instagram account. Earlier this year, the platform rolled out its shopping tools to eight countries, allowing more merchants to display their products' prices on their posts.

A couple of months later, it gave some companies the ability to add electronic payments that would allow their followers to book appointments for restaurants or salons in-app. And this June, it started allowing some brands to sell products in Stories. Instagram is also testing other experimental standalone apps, so it will not come as a surprise if it's truly developing a shopping application.