Twitter Adds “Buy” Button For Instant Shopping

Wednesday, September 10, 2014:  The real-time social network, Twitter, is going to become a shopping mall soon. On Monday the company announced that they are ready for publicly test a “buy” button which will be embedded in posts. This button will allow users to buy a product in just few clicks.

This feature was initially limited to mobile versions of Twitter and was only selling products like T-shirts and event tickets. This shopping mall option will create a new revenue stream for the network which presently relies on advertisements only. Competition in the e-commerce industry is rising as Apple is also expected to launch their new phone-based payment system today.

Facebook had already launched this “buy” button testing in July. Billions of dollars of online sales are associated with social networks. Marketers post messages on Twitter and Facebook to promote their products and links are also provided for external sites, from where those products can be bought. Now Twitter and Facebook are going a step further. This new feature will allow the platforms to charge a fee for the transaction.