Social media is our digital community, and it's fast becoming our shopping mall as well. Social commerce — using social platforms to sell products — has been rapidly growing, climbing to over $36 billion in U.S. sales this year, about 35 percent more than in 2020, according to a recent report by eMarketer. Social commerce has been around for a while, most notably since 2007 when Facebook launched its first version of Marketplace, where users could sell to each other on a peer-to-peer style platform. But only recently has social shopping taken off as the pandemic-driven e-commerce boom has made consumers very comfortable buying online. People continue to spend more and more time on social platforms, which, in turn, are adding features that make shoppable posts practical for both brands and consumers.Social commerce is good news for brands as it offers an excellent opportunity to reach new audiences on well-established platforms. And because consumers can make purchases without leaving those platforms, social commerce has the powerful benefit of streamlining the sales process.