Twitter Allows Shopping Facility

Social Media giant “Twitter” and E-commerce company “Amazon” struck a partnership, which allows Amazon customers to add products to their shopping cart by replying with the hash tag “#AmazonCart” to any tweet containing a product’s Amazon hyperlink.

Twitter Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. have announced a partnership in which users can add products to their Amazon shopping cart their Twitter account. By replying or tweeting with hash tag “#AmazonCart,” containing product hyperlink the product will be directly added to the customer Amazon account. For this customer need to link their Amazon Account with Twitter otherwise they will be asked to set it up if they reply or tweet with the hashtag. Currently the service is available in UK and USA, with hash tag “#AmazonBasket” for the customers.

However, Twitter will not get any cut from the products added to the shopping cart but some other financial agreements, if any, has not been revealed till now. This partnership will give benefit to both the companies. Footfall on Twitter will increase and people can shop while surfing Twitter. The only issue with this service is that customer’s tweets will be visible publicly which most of the users will not like. Twitter may resolve this issue later.

The partnership between social media player and ecommerce giants are nothing new. Chinese company Weibo Corp. and Alibaba group has a similar partnership where users can browse as well as buy products. Weibo has a buy button on their webpage where customer can purchase products which will direct them to Alipay, which is a service used by Alibaba to process payments. Similarly, in India, customers can buy products from Justdial.com, which is an advertisement giant in India. Companies who have tie-ups with Justdial can place their products on company website, which later will direct customer to the desired company website.

This partnership between Twitter and Amazon will increase competition in India. Currently, Twitter users can add products to their cart by using hash tag but for transaction, they need to visit Amazon. One may expect Twitter to integrate payment services with tweets. According to a report, Twitter is in talk with payment service company Stripe Inc. Twitter recently introduced mobile app install ads, which allows users to download apps directly within tweets. In contribution with such ads, Twitter can be expected to introduce a “BUY” button within these card tweets, so users can directly purchase apps when they see an ad they like.