Twitter tries the water social shopping market

Absrtact: Social networking Twitter announced in Monday that the company is testing a new feature that allows mobile users to shop directly on Twitter, and a handful of US users are already able to see the purchase button in Twitter. Twitter will give new meaning to impulsive shopping

Social networking Twitter announced in Monday that the company is testing a new feature that allows mobile users to shop directly on Twitter, and a handful of US users are already able to see "buy" buttons in Twitter.

Twitter's move will give new meaning to impulsive shopping. With this new feature, users do not need to leave Twitter to complete the shopping.

"This feature is in the early stages of development, and we intend to add shopping to the Twitter experience and make it easier, easier and more fun to shop on the mobile side," Twitter said in a statement on its official blog. "Twitter's iOS apps and Android apps are already supporting the service, and it's going to eventually extend the service to more users," he said.

Twitter is still exploring the right business model, and the service may be a potential source of revenue. Currently, Twitter's main business is advertising. Twitter can also get more user data by adding the new reseller element, including storing the user's credit card information for later shopping.

In fact, rumors about the service have been circulating in the industry for months.

To support the service, Twitter has established partnerships with the fancy, gumroad and musictoday websites and payment services stripe. It is unclear how Twitter will allocate profits to these partners. These partners cover a large number of products and services, in which fancy use social networks to sell physical goods, Gumroad is a digital product platform, and Musictoday is a special pre-sale concert tickets site.

After clicking the "Buy" button in Twitter, users can see a detailed description of the product and information about the delivery and payment. Once the user fills out and submits the relevant content, Twitter sends the order to the merchant.

Twitter said that the information was encrypted and that it was not possible for the merchant to see the user's credit card information without permission. And users can delete information stored in their accounts at any time.

Twitter has linked this "shopping" button to some of its promotional and exclusive marketing campaigns, including some brand-name businesses and musicians such as Burberry, Home Depot, Diminovat (Demi iovato), Farrell Williams (Pharrell WILLIAMS) and non-profit organizations such as GLAAD, DonorsChoose, etc. Twitter says it will also add more businesses to the list of cooperative businesses for that feature over the next few months.

Twitter is not the first social media to try to test the shopping feature in its channels. Facebook began testing the "buy" button in its ads this July, and third-party companies have been trying to sell goods through social networks. Even the electric-business giant, Amazon, has entered the field, introducing a service this May that allows consumers to buy goods through social networks. (Lin Jingdong)