Amazon Partnership with Twitter Is Next Step in Streamlined Shopping (May 6, 2014)
Amazon blazed a fresh trail into social media this week with the debut of its new Twitter shopping feature enabling users to add items to their Amazon shopping carts directly from Twitter feeds. Users may reply with a Tweet using the hashtag #AmazonCart (#amazonbasket in the U.K.) to any Amazon product link on Twitter to mark it for purchase, minimizing steps and interruptions while surfing the social media network. Shoppers who link their Twitter and Amazon accounts will find items added on Twitter in their shopping carts the next time they login to Amazon, the Seattle e-commerce giant said May 5. Those who haven’t linked their accounts will receive a reply on Twitter from @MyAmazon as a reminder to do so.
Amazon’s partnership with Twitter underscores the company’s push to streamline the process of shopping and paying, exemplified by its Login and Pay with Amazon feature introduced last year. “No more switching apps, typing passwords or trying to remember items you saw on Twitter,” Amazon says in a video describing the feature. Amazon’s new deal also leverages social media’s power to share and promote items, as each Amazon item a user marks for purchase appears in his own Twitter feed (unless the account is set to “private” status). The sales volume Amazon may drive from the deal is hard to gauge. Amazon gets only 0.07 percent of its site traffic from Twitter during a typical month, according to Internet Retailer’s 2014 Social Media 500 Guide. Twitter’s other e-commerce experiments include Starbucks’ Tweet-a-coffee option to send $5 Starbucks Card eGifts to Twitter friends and followers, introduced last fall and still in beta mode. American Express last year promoted a Twitter program called “Pay By Tweet,” giving $25 gift cards to customers who linked their credit card to their Twitter account, enabling them to make select purchases.
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