Amazon and Twitter team up for some social shopping

At first, I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that #AmazonCart, a new feature that syncs tweets on Twitter with shopping carts on Amazon.com, provides a solution for a problem that doesn’t exist. But since Amazon has 1.08 million followers on Twitter and AmazonDeals has 423,000, maybe I’m wrong.

Amazon offered a succinct explanation of the new service in a tweet. "When you discover a tweet with an Amazon.com product link, simply reply to that tweet with #AmazonCart and the product will be added to your Amazon.com Shopping Cart."

A YouTube video presents #AmazonCart as a convenience for consumers. No longer will people have to remember where on Twitter they saw a particular link so they can track down a product. Nor will they have to open a separate window to add items to their shopping carts.

[Image: AmazonCart]

One downside to the new service is that those who use it with public profiles will announce their purchasing intent to the world. But those who make their tweets available to the world may not be concerned with others knowing what they buy.

The e-commerce and technology giant clearly feels there is a need for the new service.

"We have a significant number of customers who use Twitter, and a significant number of affiliates who use Twitter, too," Julie Law, an Amazon spokesperson, told The Wall Street Journal. "So to be able to allow customers to add something to their Amazon cart without leaving Twitter was sort of a logical step."

It could be #AmazonCart is just the beginning of a new social shopping push for Amazon. "We are certainly open to working with other social networks," an unidentified company spokesperson told CNET. "Twitter in particular offers a great environment for our customers to discover product recommendations from artists, experts, brands and friends."

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Discussion Questions

Do you think #AmazonCart will be a success for Amazon? Will similar services be viable on social sites such as Facebook, Pinterest, etc.?

Poll

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Gib Bassett
Gib Bassett
9 years ago

Without considering use cases for this capability you might expect its take up to be limited. Yet consider how television audiences engage on Twitter in real time with the running of an episode. Although “DVR”ing is commonplace, the most in-demand TV series tend to still be watched live and fans flock to Twitter in real time to engage in dialog around the show. Think about how advertisers of the program could insert quick “add to cart” Tweets into the online conversation and you have the opportunity to extend advertising to a real-time purchase, associated with a medium where that isn’t usually possible. The products that could see the most success would probably be placed in the episodes themselves, and so the “value chain” here would include the producers of the media, Twitter, manufacturers/advertisers and Amazon. Pretty interesting possibilities.

Max Goldberg
Max Goldberg
9 years ago

Amazon is showing, once again, why they are the top retailer. The more they can place the ability to buy in front of customers, the more products will be purchased. Pinterest is missing a huge revenue opportunity by not enabling purchasing. Consumers should be able to make purchases wherever and whenever they want. Jeff Bezos realizes this. This is much more than an answer in search of a problem.

Anurag Rohatgi
Anurag Rohatgi
9 years ago

A simple solution, yet very precisely hits on a customer’s basic needs – respect my time and make it convenient. Great example of how technology is enabling customers to cross channel boundaries for a seamless experience.

Ken Lonyai
Ken Lonyai
9 years ago

I think this is a long-tail win for Amazon. After the early adopters get over this, I think it will take time to filter out amongst “regular” users, but I think it will catch on and be yet one more revenue stream.

The power of #AmazonCart is in the waiting shopping cart. It’s easy to tweet something into your Amazon cart and not think about it or visit Amazon for a few days. Then when back on Amazon, it becomes part of the purchase without any thought/effort, unless of course budgetary realities hit home.