The Twitter commercial asks the electric quotient, the foreground geometry?

Wen/Jeong-yuan

Since its listing on the New York Stock Exchange last November, Twitter has been sparing no effort to advance the commercialization process and boost its advertising revenues, acquiring Namo Media, TapCommerce and other advertising companies, and launching promoted video, CPAC and other new advertising products.

Driven by these factors, Twitter's operating income has risen sharply, with a year-on-year growth rate of more than 100% per cent in recent quarters, but its overly single source of income has been increasingly criticized by the capital markets and hidden in its future prospects. In the second quarter of 2014, for example, Twitter earned 312 million dollars in revenue this quarter, up 124.11% per cent year-on-year, but advertising revenue accounted for up to 88.88%, revenue from data licensing was only 11.12%, and the outlook was limited (see chart). In addition, Twitter's growth in the number of active subscribers and timeline browsing has slowed sharply, which casts a shadow over the prospects for commercialization.

In this case, Twitter desperately needs to find a way to boost user activity and open up a variety of revenue streams, and Twitter is betting on E-commerce.

In fact, there have been many rumours about Twitter's involvement in E-commerce, and Twitter's attitude is clearer, as CEO Dick Costolo made clear in 2012 that the company is considering its business. 2013, they hired the U.S. ticketing website Ticketmaster former CEO Nasanhabad (Nathan Hubbard) as the first business director, to strengthen the power of the electrical business. Since then, Twitter has started to form a retail business team, publishing a number of E-commerce-related jobs. So far, Twitter has explored many aspects of E-commerce.

In February 2013, Twitter and American Express reached a partnership agreement, and American Express card holders, after associating the card number with the Twitter account, can buy a range of items on Twitter, which is the first time a user can buy a product directly via Twitter.

This May, similar to American Express's mode of cooperation, Amazon announced that it has teamed up with Twitter to launch a new "post-shopping" feature that associates Twitter accounts with Amazon by simply reviewing a post that contains links to Amazon products and tagging "# AmazonCart ", the product will automatically join Amazon's shopping cart, users to the Amazon's website to confirm payment can be. Then in September, Amazon and Twitter further released the "Post Add wish List" function, users only need to reply to the information flow containing the Amazon product link to add "#AmazonWishList" label can be added to the product wish list.

For Twitter, whether or not it can get real benefits from the partnership, it will encourage businesses to increase their advertising on their websites, and if user habits can be well nurtured, it will also boost user activity. But Twitter has not limited its exploration of E-commerce to the aforementioned collaborations with American Express and Amazon, which are just ways to nurture a user's shopping scene. Twitter wants to become a shopping platform, with a lot of fans ' attention and discussion, to form a "discovery-discussion-buy" E-commerce closed loop.

This June, the Tech web site Re/code website found that Twitter added the "Buy Now" button to direct the link to the Retail site fancy.

July, Twitter announced the acquisition of payment services company Cardspring. Cardspring helps retailers provide customers with coupons that automatically link to credit cards and get discounts directly when they go shopping at a physical store. Cardspring can help Twitter build more links with online and offline retailers and more into consumer shopping scenarios.

In the September, Twitter finally officially launched a long rumored "buy" button on its mobile client, the first real e-commerce product that consumers can click to buy directly without jumping to the button. Currently, partners involved in the Twitter shopping test include social shopping company fancy, digital content retailer Gumroad, E-commerce company Musictoday and payment company stripe.

Through a series of acquisitions and cooperation, Twitter finally launched the direct shopping button, completed the E-commerce closed-loop building. E-commerce is not only an important part of Twitter's future diversification of revenue, but it will also inspire Twitter users to increase their activity if they can make good use of it. On a formal basis, Twitter's e-commerce is based on the scenario, which is fundamentally different from Amazon's and ebay's search-mode electric dealers. While Twitter offers information flow and news streams, not shopping streams, Twitter wants to embed the shopping stream into the user's focus on news and information, a typical scenario of shopping.

I believe that there will be more and more personalized and situational shopping in the future, and Twitter's electronic exploration is in line with the future trend of consumption. But for this experiment, I think Twitter, or all of us, should be patient enough that consumer behavior doesn't change overnight, and Twitter is less likely to be able to get its electric dealer's short board instantly.

In short, Twitter's electric-business strategy is worth looking forward to, but it needs to be patient.