Twitter Commerce Strategy To ‘Monetize Emotions’

Twitter’s test in the E-commerce space with its Buy Now button is about more than just getting people to use twitter for payments, its about learning what it takes make a sale through the app.

“We’re experimenting with different products and price points, and most importantly what emotions do you need to find to generate a sale,” Twitter President of Global Revenue Adam Bain said at the Web Summit conference in Dublin, Ireland Wednesday (Oct. 5), according to a MarketingLand.com article. What we do is monetize emotions.”

Twitter’s experiment to make its name in the E-commerce retail space follows a successful third quarter for the social media company. And while it hasn’t specifically articulated its payments strategy, its Buy Now button may be the next way for Twitter to define itself in the E-Commerce space.

“We feel like we’re just getting started,” Bain said. “There’s a number of products coming in the next year.” Twitter’s commerce business is part of the company’s model to help boost its revenue, which falls third currently to its advertising business and licensing of Twitter data to third parties. Bain discussed that commerce for Twitter is at the “startup” level, and it doesn’t have a specific business model yet. The Buy Now button is still very limited to a handful of companies and nonprofits.

“We’re trying to prove to retailers and marketers that we can move products and transactions, and that will drive revenue for us,” Bain said at the summit. “People are tweeting about products and services, but there’s a big distance between that and actually making a purchase. American Express and Amazon have already brought e-commerce closer to tweets [through hashtags]. We saw this as a great organic experience, and we decided to shrink that experience. If you’re tweeting about a product or service, a button shows up and you can one-click to buy.”