Amazon Introduces Add To Cart Social Shopping Capability Via Twitter

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Amazon Introduces Add To Cart Social Shopping Capability Via Twitter

engine

3:50 pm on May 5, 2014 (gmt 0)

Neat capability, but i'm not sure i'd want to use it.

In a partnership between Amazon and Twitter, users of both get a unique—albeit fairly specific—ability: If you spot an Amazon product link on Twitter, you can now add it to your shopping cart just by responding to the tweet with the hashtag #AmazonCart.

In order for this to work, of course, you have to connect your Amazon account to your Twitter account—which you can do at amazon.com/AmazonCart. Once you’ve replied to a link, the item will appear in your cart the next time you visit Amazon’s site. You’ll also be notified via email and in a reply tweet from @MyAmazon that a product has made its way into your cart.Amazon Introduces Add To Cart Social Shopping Capability Via Twitter [blogs.wsj.com]

graeme_p

7:29 am on May 6, 2014 (gmt 0)

Amazon make it very marginally easier to buy stuff, and get to mine your twitter stream (yes, its probably public, but this way they can link it to your Amazon account etc.). It also, as the article points out, gives them free advertising and announces your purchase to the world.

The user saves one click per purchase via twitter but has to do more typing to add the hashtag(at least if they are already logged into Amazon).

Both get a risk of the order not being received if the hashtag is mistyped.

engine

7:44 am on May 6, 2014 (gmt 0)

The actual development is interesting, and shows what can be done.

Where does this leave other ecommerce businesses?

graeme_p

8:55 am on May 6, 2014 (gmt 0)

I would have thought that this would not be too difficult to replicate: the difficulty will be persuading people to link accounts.

engine

9:27 am on May 6, 2014 (gmt 0)

A site the size of Amazon can probably convince people easily.

I'm still not convinced about it. How much faster do you need to order stuff!

Joozed

6:41 pm on May 10, 2014 (gmt 0)

I remember a service I think called ChirpIt or ChirpItUp that used to to do this same exact thing with Twitter and Paypal. I always though it was awesome way to generate sales and leads. The few times I tried it it worked great. I did it with music links. For some reason the service stopped I believe. It will interesting to see where Amazon and Twitter can take this.

lucy24

8:19 pm on May 10, 2014 (gmt 0)

How much faster do you need to order stuff!

Each extra mouseclick, each added keypress, is one more chance to say "Maybe I don't need this item right now." So easier ordering is good.

Both get a risk of the order not being received if the hashtag is mistyped.

Are there a lot of people who spend their lives on Twitter but never check their email? Sooner or later you'll notice the absence of an order acknowledgement. Besides, can't you copy-and-paste?

graeme_p

5:08 pm on May 11, 2014 (gmt 0)

A lot of people live on Facebook but check their email infrequently so the same may be true of Twitter. It would be inconvenient of copy and paste.

Stickywebz

1:41 pm on May 22, 2014 (gmt 0)

Really cool interaction. Although there are some small errors, I feel we can look past them simply due to creativity.