Twitter Gets A Buy Button

Twitter has taken another big step into the realm of commerce.

The ubiquitous social media platform announced on Friday (June 19) that it is testing out “product and place pages” and “product and place collections,” both of which are related to promoting specific products with images, video and pricing — as well as an option to buy them, right there on Twitter.

Writing about the new feature in a blog on the company’s website, Amaryllis Fox, product manager at Twitter, presents the example of a particular book and how it would appear in a Twitter feed — targeted to relevant users — with the opportunity to purchase.

“We’ll show you images and a description right above the tweets that are most timely and relevant to you,” she writes. “These may be tweets from accounts you follow, relevant news updates or popular content about the book.”

Product and place collections, meanwhile, are built upon the page’s idea and presents groupings of places and things curated by “influencers” (whom currently include Demi Lovato, HBO and Nike, among others). These items are laid out on a single page, all recommended to their Twitter followers as potential purchases directly from the platform.

Fox goes on to explain in the blog post that these curator profiles are viewable on both iOS and Android platforms, as well as on Twitter.com. Additionally, iOS users can access these collections by engaging with the search bar and then the category-based menu it provides.

“This is just the beginning,” says Fox, sharing that “in the coming months we’ll be testing more new experiences we hope give you the most personalized and relevant information about the places and things you want to explore.”

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