In May this year, Amazon and Twitter jointly announced to launch a new function about "post shopping". It means that if customers reply some products' posts and add the tag "#AmazonCart" in Twitter, the related products will be added to your amazon cart automatically. And customers can finish the payment in Amazon after that.
Just past September, Amazon and Twitter further issued a "wish list" function. That means users only need to add the tag "#AmazonWishList", the product can be added to the wish list in Amazon.
Either the product is added to the shopping cart, or added to a wish list, the user still needs to complete the purchase on Amazon. But products will probably be bought in the end. So we can say that Amazon tries to cross a big step in Social shopping. Since Amazon started to develop the social media, Bezos does not want to share users data with others. On the other hand, they also worried about the potential threat in these sites for the status of Amazon.
Driven by social media, consumers' shopping behavior has been influenced by social chains. New ways of shopping appeared as well. In theory, through the application of social relationships, as well as the establishment of the adjoint interaction and sharing mechanism, both the shopping experience and shopping process will be improved a lot. Ways of shopping will also be greatly enriched. Although the combination between eCommerce and social media does not have any successful cases and it is difficult to shake the existing business pattern, we have seen a bright prospect. In the new trend of eCommerce, Amazon has to start trying. For Amazon, cooperation with Twitter is equivalent to adding a shopping interface. It also lays the foundation for the future long-term development of social shopping.
And for Twitter, the demand of cooperation with Amazon is also strong, Because it is a critical thing for Twitter to take an approach to commercialization. As we all know, Twitter has a huge number of users, but the commercial effect is not remarkable. According to the recent reports released in the second quarter of 2014, it has over 2 hundred million active users each month and the total revenue grew 124%, up to 300 million dollars. But 90% of the revenue comes from advertising. Too much single source of revenue makes a net loss compared to the same period before. So for Twitter, simply relying on advertising for survival is extremely unreliable. It is urgent for them to find a new source to bring the income. So exploring and combining with eCommerce is the only way which must be passed. At the same time, Twitter has not been idle. In Sep. this year, the "(Buy)" button appeared in the official Twitter on mobile devices. Users only need to click this button for shopping. In addition, there is still a long way to go for Twitter.
Perhaps you don't think that this deal is anything exciting. And the prospect is not worth looking forward to. I also believe that the cooperation between Twitter and Amazon is very difficult to get a big effect in a short time. One reason is that the conversion rate will not be high and the user activity will also be relatively limited. But the most important thing is that the way of shopping combined with social media is nurturing. All of us do not know what will happen, just like we couldn't imagine such frequent shopping from the mobile phone 10 years ago.
In fact, social shopping is a new eCommerce business solution. It was set up from social sharing and relative introductions. It helps customers to find some products easily. No matter which enterprise failed, there are still a lot of new enterprises exploring it. Be patient, and we will see how it will change our life.
TMO Group is a web development company in China. We help medium to large companies via consulting to web technology development support.
