1. Twitter’s ‘Buy now’ button allows users to make purchases without having to leave the
platform
Twitter’s in-beta launch of its much-anticipated e-commerce system took place in collaboration
with selected partners including fashion house Burberry and music artists such as Eminem, Rihanna
and Pharrell Williams.
Tweets from chosen partners – which also included a number of not-for-profit organisations –
appeared in their followers’ smartphone Twitter feeds with an embedded ‘Buy now’ button, which
enabled users to act on their impulse to purchase immediately.
Those using the Twitter apps for Android and iOS are prompted to enter payment and shipping
information the first time they click to buy, which Twitter then stores securely for their future
purchases.
While most e-commerce facilitators receive a fee per transaction, Twitter’s ‘Buy Now’ model will
not cost the brands or artists anything – at least to begin with.
“We’re starting small,” said Nathan Hubbard, Twitter’s head of commerce. “It will start with a small
percentage of our user base, and with brands that have done innovative things on the platform in the
past, but we expect to ramp it up in the coming weeks.”
To begin with, only selected Twitter users in the US will have access to the service as Hubbard and
his team aim to perfect their onboarding experience. But, ever since Hubbard joined Twitter in
2013, he’s made it clear that entering the world of e- commerce is key.
The launch follows in the wake of a successful first few months for Amazon’s own solution –
#AmazonCart – and an older similar purchase-via-hashtag experiment launched by American
Express in 2013.
In short, social media is perceived to be perhaps the only platform where fun, discovery, brand
engagement and purchase can occur together. Monetising these platforms is the holy grail for digital

2. retailers, who recognise the power it could have in terms of direct referrals and peer-to-peer
advocacy.
Whether or not it will ever really get off the ground is open to debate, as weekly British advertising
magazine Campaign discovered:
"It will work if users are offered the opportunity to get first dibs on new products" said Yelena
Gaufman, head of planning at Havas Worldwide UK. "As a personal news service, Twitter's new
button could marry the benefits of first-to-know with first-to- buy.”
"The kind of items we are likely to buy from a tweet will be low-value impulse purchases," said Liz
Faber, SapientNitro's social strategy lead for the EU. "They launched with Burberry – who are
brilliant digital storytellers – during London Fashion Week. What could you buy? Nail polish."
A report from comScore on mobile app usage in the US (released in late September 2014) revealed
that while Amazon and eBay form part of the 'big six' (alongside Facebook, Google, Apple and
Yahoo), just 5% of smartphone-users' time is actually spent on retail apps.
Instinctively it seems that, while social media platforms such as Twitter have made themselves an
essential part of daily life for people of many ages (and especially millennials), they will need to
connect to these retail opportunities in order to monetise their services, and thus justify their huge
financial valuations.
For many, the jury is still out. Watch this space.