Two days ago Twitter officially announced a new "Buy" button that can be embedded in tweets to allow users to buy a product with a couple of clicks. For now the feature is limited to a "small percentage" of users on its mobile app only.
However, it's an important announcement as it could signal the next evolution for social platforms as they move from being not just a place to connect and share content, but also important engines for social fuelled "discovery commerce".
In their blog post, Twitter goes on to say, “This is an early step in our building functionality into Twitter to make shopping from mobile devices convenient and easy, hopefully even fun.”
The social media giant began dropping hints and signals that something like this might be coming when it hired former Ticketmaster CEO Nathan Hubbard to lead its commerce team over a year ago. Speculation only increased when a tech news blog got its hands on a mock-up of the Buy Now button a few months back and users began discovering the buttons sporadically as part of Twitter's initial beta tests.
To start, Twitter will be testing the feature with a select group of artists, brands, and nonprofit organizations.
With people becoming more and more comfortable with completing transactions on their mobile devices, be it their smartphone or tablet, mobile commerce will continue to evolve quickly, and its something we've been watching and planning for very closely here at Shopify.
