There have been various leaks in the past and this has been a long time coming. After initial tests are done, you’ll soon be able to buy merchandise from select stores directly from your Twitter timeline. I don’t think that comes as a surprise to anyone as other social networks like Facebook have already been there with the likes of the shut down Gifts while in China social networks also double up as marketplaces right from the mobile applications to their desktop-centered website versions. It’s only sweet that Twitter actually confirmed this.
According to Twitter, the ability to click a buy button embedded in a tweet and getting the actual merchandise after a not-so-lengthy checkout process is coming to a few users of the social network in the United States as it expands with time to more and more users and probaly will arrive in foreign markets as the necessary agreements are put in place and the user experience gets better. The service will be available on Twitter’s mobile apps at first as it prepares to launch it on desktop later.
Fancy, Gumroad, Musictoday, Stripe, The Home Depot, Burberry among a handful of others are the companies Twitter will be partnering with to make the whole process possible. In essence you’ll simply be clicking the buy button on a tweet and enter your credit card information, shipping details and voila! What you’ll never realise is that these partnering companies pick up from there and will facilitate delivery of your purchased item in a process that Twitter hopes will be seamless and successful so that a wider roll out is possible in the near future. Artists, other brands and several non-profit organizations are also in the mix. This development is not only convenient to users but also ends up making some revenue for the company that went public last year amidst doubts that its lack of definite revenue model and reliance on sponsored tweets were not enough to warrant investor attention.
