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Live Commerce, and what it can do today

Planning and recording live selling shows in Social Studio, and the plain reason no show can be started at a marketplace from here.

Updated

Live Commerce is where a live selling show is planned and recorded alongside the rest of your content. Today it plans and records. It cannot start a show at a marketplace, and it cannot read one.

Two channels are supported: TikTok Shop LIVE and Whatnot. Social Studio holds a complete adapter for each, and each one refuses every call to the marketplace rather than inventing a result. Nothing on the page is a placeholder figure. No viewer count, order or sales total is shown, because none has been measured.

The page says this itself, in a warning at the top, and that warning is written from the routes that actually exist rather than from a setting somebody could forget to change.

BEFORE YOU START

  • Membership of the organisation you are opening. Anyone who is not an active member is sent back to /app rather than shown the page.
  • The "administer" permission to add a channel account, create a session or move one. Reading the page needs membership only.
  • A workspace you can reach. Accounts and sessions are saved into a workspace, and the page lists only the ones in workspaces your access reaches.
  • No connected marketplace account, because there is no way to connect one. That is stated rather than worked around.

STEPS

  1. Open Live Commerce from the navigation, or go to /app/live for your organisation.
  2. Read the warning under the page title. It names every condition on what follows.
  3. Under "Marketplace connections", read each channel's review status and the capabilities it claims. Whatnot claims none at all; TikTok Shop claims four, none of them usable yet.
  4. Under "Channel accounts", pick a workspace and a channel, optionally name the account, and choose "Add channel account".
  5. Under "Live sessions", pick a workspace and a channel, give the session a title, optionally attach a channel account, and choose "Create draft session".
  6. Use "Cancel" on a session you no longer intend to run. Use "End" only on a session that is live, which today none can be.

WHAT YOU SHOULD SEE

The account listed under "Channel accounts" with the status not_connected, and the session listed under "Live sessions" as a draft. Both are real rows in your workspace, and both are visible to anyone else who can reach that workspace.

WHAT THIS WILL NOT DO

  • It will not start a show. "Start" is offered, and it refuses every time with "Cannot start live session {id}: no connected channel account." A channel account is created as not_connected and nothing in the product ever writes any other status onto it, so attaching one does not change the answer.
  • It will not read viewers, orders or sales. Reading them is a call to the marketplace, and the marketplace call is what does not exist.
  • It will not connect an account. Adding a channel account creates a record of an account you hold elsewhere. It is not a sign-in and it authorises nothing.
  • Cancelling and ending are real. They change Social Studio's own record of the session, and nothing else, because there is nothing else to change.

IF IT DOES NOT WORK

  • Being redirected to /app means you are not an active member of the organisation in the address.
  • "This action was refused (...)" is the action gate declining before the session was touched. The word in the brackets is the gate's own decision.
  • A 409 with "Live session {id} already reached a terminal state (cancelled)." means the session has already ended, been cancelled or failed. A terminal session offers no buttons.
  • A 409 with "Live session {id} is not live (status: draft)." means you asked to end something that never started.
  • "The selected channel account belongs to a different channel." means the account you attached is for the other marketplace. Change one of the two.
  • "No workspace is available to add a channel account to yet." means your access reaches no workspace in this organisation. Ask an administrator.

COMMON QUESTIONS

Is this waiting on a setting in Social Studio?

No. Both marketplaces are pending their own review, and neither has granted the access an integration needs. Nothing in this product shortens that, and no configuration switch would.

Why offer a "Start" button that always refuses?

Because the refusal is the honest answer and it names its reason. Hiding the button would leave a reader guessing whether the show had started somewhere.

Can I still promote a show from Social Studio?

Yes. Everything about planning, writing and scheduling the posts around a show works normally. Only the marketplace side of it is unavailable.

  • Planning a Whatnot show

    Recording a Whatnot show in your calendar and reporting, and why Whatnot is the one channel where there is nothing to integrate with rather than an approval still to come.

  • Planning a TikTok Shop LIVE session

    Recording a TikTok Shop LIVE selling session alongside the posts that promote it, and exactly which TikTok approvals stand between the adapter and a working connection.

  • Connecting your channels

    What the Connections page shows, which networks can publish today, and what the account health states mean.