Lots of people enjoy shopping, so this isn't as obviously bad of an idea as some of the comments here imply. Open question whether this will be more like "hanging out at the mall" or "watching QVC."
Testing a way for you to make purchases on Twitter
21–30 of 122 posts
Re: Testing a way for you to make purchases on Twitter
#22In an incredible turn of timing, I created a mockup of a Facebook icon for the exact same functionality about six hours ago: https://www.dropbox.com/s/sed9ewxz25turey/Screenshot%202014-...
Facebook already tried something like this when they purchased Karma and it didn't work out too well.
Re: Testing a way for you to make purchases on Twitter
#23It would be interesting to see if content writers can promote their content through this to earn money through micro-payments.
Likely Steps:
1. Capture attention in 140 characters.
2. Provide a good deal for the article/content at a small price
Just being optimistic about news, article writers. I guess we might soon see Economist stories with nice 140 character titles and eye-catchy pictures with a buy button to read full article, post which it's added to your twitter shelf. I wonder if this just might prove to be the payment mechanism needed for such content consumption. Somewhat similar to the app-store economy, twitter might become the content-store. Let's see...
Though I hope the dominant commerce part is kept as a separate tab perhaps like "Discover" tab, as I guess I wouldn't want to have my twitter stream as a series of ads. One or two "buy" tweets might be ok though I think... Will have to wait and watch how this goes.
Re: Testing a way for you to make purchases on Twitter
#24My main concern is security. When Twitter stores your payment information it will be easy to buy something with a single click. But I've seen way too many Twitter hacking going on when I look at friends' timelines. If tweets like 'How I lost 100 lbs in 3 months! Click > bit.ly/youwillbehacked' can be posted without too much effort, these same hackers could buy stuff for free by just hacking into your Twitter account.
Re: Testing a way for you to make purchases on Twitter
#25I'm actually impressed they found a way to monetize their platform that doesn't involve obtrusive ads. This seems like a good source of income for them and their clients, and as long as they don't force you to follow commercial accounts, it will be almost invisible to anyone who doesn't want to see it. I'm cautiously optimistic.
Exactly my thoughts. I think at this moment we are all so scared of possible future changes, always for the sake of profits against users' will, that something as simple and inoffensive as this is actually a pleasant surprise.
I hope they will be happy enough with the button's results to not jump to other, more irritating changes. And also hope that this is not just a door for some future ads spike.
Re: Testing a way for you to make purchases on Twitter
#26it is a big conundrum if your core product, through its simplicity, is really great. you hire all these product people, have all these investors, but any direction you can take the product actually makes it worse against its initial, great core use. twitter as a protocol is on a level with smtp - a lucky strike, hitting a need, something for the ages. journalists, media, etc. love it. RSS on a whole new level. but tw…
Here's what the problem is: twitter isn't a product company. It's a service company. They didn't just invent a protocol, like the SMTP guys did, they provide a service for free. That means they need money to hire people, maintain servers, and survive in general. Even if they didn't want to make any money, if they never cared for profit, they would still need a way to have their service generate income.
I agree that it's a conundrum for them, but with this solution at least they're trying to do it in a non-obtrusive way that doesn't jeopardize the entire platform.
Re: Testing a way for you to make purchases on Twitter
#27My main concern is security. When Twitter stores your payment information it will be easy to buy something with a single click. But I've seen way too many Twitter hacking going on when I look at friends' timelines. If tweets like 'How I lost 100 lbs in 3 months! Click > bit.ly/youwillbehacked' can be posted without too much effort, these same hackers could buy stuff for free by just hacking into your Twitter account.
Twitter offers 2 factor authentication for account logins (SMS a code every time you login).
Re: Testing a way for you to make purchases on Twitter
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't get it. How can a "Buy" button bother anyone? You're following a company that sells something you're interested in, they have a promotion or something on Twitter, you buy it with one click. Am I missing something? Or is it just super cool to hate anything that could potentially generate some profit for Twitter?
Unless it's not from a company I'm following. Inevitably this will show up in the ads I'm shown on the site, which are things I do not follow.
With or without the buy button you are seeing the adds.
Re: Testing a way for you to make purchases on Twitter
#29As long as it doesn't get forced onto 3rd party clients, even their own Tweetdeck, then I don't really care. For now...
I don't get it. How can a "Buy" button bother anyone? You're following a company that sells something you're interested in, they have a promotion or something on Twitter, you buy it with one click. Am I missing something? Or is it just super cool to hate anything that could potentially generate some profit for Twitter?
Because it opens the doors for referrals and sponsors.
Personally I think it's a good idea, for the brands and people I follow I know I'll only be getting shown the 'Buy' button for targeted items. However, I know my friends and family follow people who are clearly paid to promote a product.
Just to give you an example, Mark Wright is a reality TV celebrity here in England, and it's clear he is paid to promote diet supplements. if you check out his tweets you'll see that he's always retweeting, and taking pics of them (https://twitter.com/MarkWright_).
At the moment, conversion metrics are quite hard to get, however imagine if each one had a Buy button. It would be super easy to see which tweets leads to sales, which in turn will lead to a more aggressive sales pitch in order to bump up your conversions and maximise on referrals, as they'd likely to change to a percentage of sales rather than a fixed fee now that conversations are recordable.
There used to be a thing that you have to disclose your affiliation (think it was cmp.ly) but don't believe it ever got enforced, much like the EU Cookie Law, kind of.
Don't get me wrong, in my feed I trust people I follow and this won't happen. But for casual tweeters, it's just too easy to be exploited.
Re: Testing a way for you to make purchases on Twitter
#30A way to bet on a sport/game via Twitter would be an interesting thing to do. Couple of months ago, I actually looked for ways to do it around the Twitter's cards API but never managed to get beyond the initial thoughts of doing so.