Twitter is rolling out more ‘Buy Now’ buttons to your timeline

Social media is the next frontier of this democratization – an increasingly mobile and social customer presents a new challenge, and a great opportunity, for retailers and brand owners to extend the buying experience for impulse purchases during social interactions.

It’s been about a year since Twitter launched tests of e-commerce, and now it’s rolling out a “buy now” button system wide-so any United States retailer big or small can sell physical products, digital goods or services all within a tweet. Chief among them is Best Buy, which will use Stripe to power sales directly in Tweets. But it is nonetheless a big step ahead for the company in its efforts to build a revenue stream beyond advertising and position itself as a place not only to hear and talk about a product, but to buy that product as well without leaving Twitter.

“We think of Twitter as the world’s largest direct-to-consumer channel”, Twitter’s head of commerce Nathan Hubbard said. Previous stalwarts included Fancy, Stripe, Gumroad and Musictoday. The company today announced it’s planning to roll out the “Buy Now” buttons it introduced past year to many more merchants and brands.

“Twitter was one of the first social networks to begin exploring social commerce, and Demandware has been engaged with them for a few time”, Anderson said.

I write “potentially” because merchants still have to want to use them. Twitter’s Buy button is now only available for businesses selling in the US.

And in the Q2 earnings call, the commerce part of Twitter’s business came up only once, prompting a mini-dodge from interim-CEO Jack Dorsey. One of the first Demandware clients to enable the Twitter “Buy Now” button is PacSun, a leading action sports and lifestyle specialty retailer. “What’s unique about Twitter is that it’s where people already connect with the things that they love”.

Shopify says it is starting a partnership with Twitter that will allow U.S.-based businesses to sell products directly on the social media website.