In-tweet purchases are now a reality. Twitter was said to be working on this for a while, and the social network has now officially implemented a way for people to shop directly from their feed.
This is the company’s way of making the process of shopping on mobile devices convenient and straightforward, quite similar to how Facebook does things these days. Although still in early test stage as of this writing, the possibilities for online marketers here are far reaching.
Twitter announced this on its official blog, saying:
“This is an early step in our building functionality into Twitter to make shopping from mobile devices convenient and easy, hopefully even fun. Users will get access to offers and merchandise they can’t get anywhere else and can act on them right in the Twitter apps for Android and iOS; sellers will gain a new way to turn the direct relationship they build with their followers into sales.”
For this first phase, the company has partnered with Fancy (a social shopping platform), Gumroad (an online marketplace) Stripe (payment processor) and MusicToday.
Twitter will be testing this feature with a few artists and shops, as well as vendors like Home Depot and even a chart, Nature Conservancy. Soon users will see a “Buy” button in tweets that will allow them to quickly make a purchase, after getting details about that particular product, of course.
You can see it in action in this short video below:
The fascinating bit here is that social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat are now turning into storefronts. And although it will be a while before they are open for everyone, maintaining a weighty social presence gets all that more vital for online marketers.
Done right, this could soon become parallel to the colossal heights of email marketing.