AmazonCart – Add items to your Amazon.com shopping cart without leaving Twitter

We gotta stop using the word "engage" so much.

There's a myth among social media marketers that their worth is measured by how much they "engage" users. Problem is, the word "engage" is vague enough to cover any action. Liking is engaging. Clicking is engaging. Commenting is engaging. So companies post crap on Facebook that does nothing for their bottom line, but justify it by the number of times it was liked or shared. That's how we get all this clickbait nonsense. It doesn't actually "engage" anyone, but it gets clicked.

So lets be specific. This is not "engaging clientele via social channels". This is using twitter for window shopping, not to mention free advertising. And I for one think it's a terrible idea. Twitter an unsuitable interface for shopping, and I don't want the whole world to know what I'm buying on Amazon.

Sorry to flip out on you. It just seemed like the ideal place to criticize the breezy, bs-filled lingo of the tech industry. Likewise, I'm annoyed by "other players in the space". You could have easily said "other online retailers."

Wow that is a new twist to privacy I din't see coming. Let the world know what you are buying and what could possibly go wrong. How long until advertisers or spammers pull in automated scans for tweets with #AmazonCart and start delivering personalized recommendation via direct message or via a mention on their tweet. Well atleast they got to narrow it down from possible customers to potential customers.

Yeah. Especially because Amazon pays to retarget people based on their cart items until they convert. So if you have goods listed on Amazon, this is a way to quickly get people that you interact with on Twitter to sign up to get more pressure on them to make the extra step from add cart -> purchase. If they can make it so that you don't even have to visit the Amazon site to give you cart reminders I could see more people than just Amazon adopting this. So you effectively get free ads on Amazon's dime if you can get customers to adopt it.

Even people like small authors could do great with this: they can have a smooth transition from talking about their book with people online to having them buy it without relying on people's keeping their short term memory together so they remember to pick up the book. Authors sell books on their book tours because people don't have a chance to forget to pick up a copy.

If you find it annoying, you can just either not follow the Amazon accounts or block them. This is a nifty little thing, and it'd be a shame if it gets screwed up.

What could go wrong? Honest question.

I understand the need for privacy and announcing your purcheses to the world seems both uncomfortable and a little gauche to me but spam is a separate problem that each platform will have to deal with regardless.

>You can't DM someone that you don't follow. Twitter already exposes all the text of non-protected accounts to advertisers for their contextual ad products.

I agree but think about it this way. I follow Starbucks because I like them and visit them often. Now I see a link for discounted Starbucks coffee on Amazon and purchase them via twitter. Prior to that Starbucks had to make assumptions or run some machine algo on my tweets to determine: a) I am not a bot and b) My loyalty can or cannot be leveraged. However with this purchase, whenever they bring out a new flavor they could be certain with some confidence that I would make a purchase, thus messaging me personally or including me in one of their tweets.

Its not necessarily a bad thing but history has it that convenience always has its price.