Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) today announced that it would be adding a Buy Now button to Twitter, specifically on mobile.
This is yet another move by Twitter to increase their profitability through finding more revenue making opportunities, this follows its partnering with Amazon to tag purchases on Twitter back in May for adding to an Amazon cart. If anything, this Buy Now button is an evolution of that idea, making Twitter the direct point of sale instead of trying to send you somewhere else to buy the item. Twitter has hundreds of millions of users and if it makes this work right, it may actually have figured out eCommerce through social media before another social media company, Facebook (NASDAQ:FB).
What this also does is give Twitter easier access to consumers’ credit cards, which could in turn allow Twitter to effectively become their own marketplace where bands, brands and other companies looking to sell something could sell direct through Twitter and use it as a marketplace in addition to a social media marketing platform. By incorporating Buy Now into Twitter as a whole, the company could effectively start to compete with the likes of Amazon and other etailers that generally have to wait until a consumer is referred to their site through Google or some other form of social media like Pinterest or Facebook. What will be interesting to see is whether or not Facebook and Pinterest will follow Twitter’s lead with this move and add similar Buy Now features to their websites as well. Even though, Pinterest technically already does this with many of its links, it is not directly selling the products, it’s merely a referral platform.
Twitter Buy Now
Twitter’s shares are currently up over 2.5% on this news, clearly indicating that investors are happy with the direction that Twitter is moving, and its really hard to argue with because it makes sense and doesn’t appear to be very intrusive at all. I suspect that consumers will welcome this feature and won’t have much backlash at all. Obviously, this Buy Now button isn’t some sort of wild innovation, but it is a way for social media to become more serious and Twitter to become more profitable.
