There are exactly zero times I wished I could buy something from a Tweet with a button. Given that limited observation of buyer behavior, and knowing full well Twitter wishes to make profit, I'm assuming these buttons will be forced into my public stream somewhere, somehow. Some people on here think these buttons will be placed there by Twitter via ads, but I have another idea:
Provide a micropayment channel program where, when I retweet a purchase button, I get part of the revenue share. Use cryptocurrencies to implement the feature. See @tipdoge for reference.
I'd be pretty likely to buy music off Twitter if it was released there exclusively. Come to think of it, I'd be highly likely to buy one-off items from Etsy, Gumroad, and Amazon through my Twitter stream as well.
When I saw a band in the list of test clients, it sort of made sense. I wouldn't buy clothes, but spend $1 to get this soundboard boot of a song from concert X? I'd probably click that.
And now that I think of it, also books and concert tickets. One thing that frustrates me endlessly about fiction authors is they don't curate mailing lists. For whatever reason -- and they must have tested it -- amazon does not do a good job of informing you of new releases from authors you've purchased. I have a handful of authors I like enough that I buy everything they write. The smarter ones curate email lists to help me do that, but I think twitter often serves that purpose for authors and bands. So if they could sell me concert tickets or their new releases inline I may well buy.
I'm actually impressed they found a way to monetize their platform that doesn't involve obtrusive ads. This seems like a good source of income for them and their clients, and as long as they don't force you to follow commercial accounts, it will be almost invisible to anyone who doesn't want to see it.
Exactly my thoughts. I think at this moment we are all so scared of possible future changes, always for the sake of profits against users' will, that something as simple and inoffensive as this is actually a pleasant surprise.
I hope they will be happy enough with the button's results to not jump to other, more irritating changes. And also hope that this is not just a door for some future ads spike.
One use case I can think of that might be suited to real time updates/shopping would be when a football/soccer team releases a new season shirt. I follow the EPL, there's always a huge fuss in the media when the big teams release their new shirt (not sure if this applies to American sports), if the images broke first on Twitter it could be a good source of sales.
The downside is that it would be quite one-off, the interest would die quickly.
it is a big conundrum if your core product, through its simplicity, is really great.
you hire all these product people, have all these investors, but any direction you can take the product actually makes it worse against its initial, great core use.
twitter as a protocol is on a level with smtp - a lucky strike, hitting a need, something for the ages. journalists, media, etc. love it. RSS on a whole new level.
but twitter as a product company? smtp is a not a profit model, you need to have real, closed products - hence the API limits, hence all this other bull. they have a narrow scope hit product and will kill it by making it broad. a little bit like google and search, put ads on it, done, the rest is noise driven by boredom and/or panic (we need to justify our existence!).
twitters design team is bigger than most startups - and for what? the whole slack team fits into the twitter reception area and covers how many platforms, apps, use cases by now?
you threw a lucky punch with a communication channel/protocol, but now you're stuck. aren't we happy that the smtp or unix guys as a whole didn't try the same. "monetize".
Here's what the problem is: twitter isn't a product company. It's a service company. They didn't just invent a protocol, like the SMTP guys did, they provide a service for free. That means they need money to hire people, maintain servers, and survive in general. Even if they didn't want to make any money, if they never cared for profit, they would still need a way to have their service generate income.
I agree that it's a conundrum for them, but with this solution at least they're trying to do it in a non-obtrusive way that doesn't jeopardize the entire platform.
It would be interesting to see if content writers can promote their content through this to earn money through micro-payments.
Likely Steps:
1. Capture attention in 140 characters.
2. Provide a good deal for the article/content at a small price
Just being optimistic about news, article writers. I guess we might soon see Economist stories with nice 140 character titles and eye-catchy pictures with a buy button to read full article, post which it's added to your twitter shelf.
I wonder if this just might prove to be the payment mechanism needed for such content consumption. Somewhat similar to the app-store economy, twitter might become the content-store. Let's see...
Though I hope the dominant commerce part is kept as a separate tab perhaps like "Discover" tab, as I guess I wouldn't want to have my twitter stream as a series of ads. One or two "buy" tweets might be ok though I think... Will have to wait and watch how this goes.
I was thinking exactly this. While for purchases of multiple items in groups or of items which I typically research first (most things), smaller commodity or usually single-items purchases might make sense in this context.
One such thing would be an eBook or similar that you'd buy from someone you know or know of on Twitter.
See Chirpify[1], who has since pivoted. I don't know if that pivot was because of the idea or because Twitter decided it made more sense to be an ad wall than a platform.
I really, truly do not understand Twitter's thinking. I'm sure on someone's spreadsheet of imaginary numbers it looks more attractive to be a billboard, but Twitter had the opportunity to be a true platform. A platform gives you control. It's a longer-term play, but my goodness the opportunities missed. Including this one, which could have been in play years ago.
Whether people will actually use this feature is a whole other question.
This is a little bit too hand-wavy to me. You mention only a single opportunity Twitter missed by not focusing on being a "true platform", and then you immediately hedge by saying that you're not sure people will actually use it.
Advertising is way more lucrative. See $FB. HNers need to come to grips with the fact that advertising is by far the best way to monetize attention. And it's quite possible that will never change.
This could become big. Imagine celebrities tweeting buy link for their album or donation links when some calamity strikes or AMZN/Flipkart launching an exclusive deal/product on twitter or imagine launch of a new book/phone/car and tweeting buy button to prebook it. This could take impulse buy to a whole new level. Has Twitter finally found a viable business model ?
I wonder if there's a way to generalize this so any text or image can have metadata about purchasing the exact product. Something like a shorter UPC but with a non-intrusive reader embedded everywhere offering you to buy the product through manufacturer-controlled channels (varying depending on what country you are in).
You "just" need to get enough users to install the scanning software; maybe the next iPhone will come with Apple Shopping that scans all text you see and all images for the metadata/watermarks. As it detected a product, the new second $ button lights up. Press down on it for a second, and the product information pops up (Apple Shopping knows your size/address/credit card already of course). Hold it down for a few seconds longer, and you've made your purchase. Don't, and a few weeks later maybe the seller gets to send you a 10% off coupon.
Actually, Amazon's phones might already have something like that, letting you scan a bar code in a physical shop but purchase from Amazon.
Any app/website with a large user base should probably add this feature. The main value here, compared to simply dropping an ecommerce link in a tweet (the current use case), is piggy backing payment and fulfillment on top of the existing twitter user account.
Lots of people enjoy shopping, so this isn't as obviously bad of an idea as some of the comments here imply. Open question whether this will be more like "hanging out at the mall" or "watching QVC."
Let's hope that the selling-out of Twitter will give a nudge to its open decentralized competitors... I'm not holding my breath, but who knows ? I still dream of an XMPP Twitter...
I don't think that Twitter's effort to monetize is directly equal to selling out. If the service's quality degrades significantly (too many pushy ads and buy buttons) then, I'd say it sold out. So far, I've found the ads fairly relevant and not too frequent.
The question on my mind is this: how can this possibly make anyone any money, given Apple's 30% cut on in-app purchases? I seriously doubt Apple would give that up.
My main concern is security. When Twitter stores your payment information it will be easy to buy something with a single click. But I've seen way too many Twitter hacking going on when I look at friends' timelines. If tweets like 'How I lost 100 lbs in 3 months! Click > bit.ly/youwillbehacked' can be posted without too much effort, these same hackers could buy stuff for free by just hacking into your Twitter account.
A way to bet on a sport/game via Twitter would be an interesting thing to do. Couple of months ago, I actually looked for ways to do it around the Twitter's cards API but never managed to get beyond the initial thoughts of doing so.
[+] [-] kordless|11 years ago|reply
Provide a micropayment channel program where, when I retweet a purchase button, I get part of the revenue share. Use cryptocurrencies to implement the feature. See @tipdoge for reference.
[+] [-] fudged71|11 years ago|reply
as well at turn the social network into a cesspool.
[+] [-] mehulkar|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bentlegen|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] x0x0|11 years ago|reply
And now that I think of it, also books and concert tickets. One thing that frustrates me endlessly about fiction authors is they don't curate mailing lists. For whatever reason -- and they must have tested it -- amazon does not do a good job of informing you of new releases from authors you've purchased. I have a handful of authors I like enough that I buy everything they write. The smarter ones curate email lists to help me do that, but I think twitter often serves that purpose for authors and bands. So if they could sell me concert tickets or their new releases inline I may well buy.
[+] [-] pavel_lishin|11 years ago|reply
But there are a huge number of times when a corporation has wished it could make it super easy for you to make a snap purchasing decision.
[+] [-] samstave|11 years ago|reply
"Announcing super concert 2,000 is open for ticket purchases! Click here now to get your!!! ONLY 5,000 slots available!"
[+] [-] legohead|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] herge|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chton|11 years ago|reply
I'm cautiously optimistic.
[+] [-] ricardolopes|11 years ago|reply
I hope they will be happy enough with the button's results to not jump to other, more irritating changes. And also hope that this is not just a door for some future ads spike.
[+] [-] pionar|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] patrickk|11 years ago|reply
The downside is that it would be quite one-off, the interest would die quickly.
[+] [-] liotier|11 years ago|reply
Promoted Tweets are quite intrusive already...
[+] [-] pinaceae|11 years ago|reply
you hire all these product people, have all these investors, but any direction you can take the product actually makes it worse against its initial, great core use.
twitter as a protocol is on a level with smtp - a lucky strike, hitting a need, something for the ages. journalists, media, etc. love it. RSS on a whole new level.
but twitter as a product company? smtp is a not a profit model, you need to have real, closed products - hence the API limits, hence all this other bull. they have a narrow scope hit product and will kill it by making it broad. a little bit like google and search, put ads on it, done, the rest is noise driven by boredom and/or panic (we need to justify our existence!).
twitters design team is bigger than most startups - and for what? the whole slack team fits into the twitter reception area and covers how many platforms, apps, use cases by now?
you threw a lucky punch with a communication channel/protocol, but now you're stuck. aren't we happy that the smtp or unix guys as a whole didn't try the same. "monetize".
[+] [-] pionar|11 years ago|reply
Twitter is a service. Services need money. It's a simple as that.
[+] [-] chton|11 years ago|reply
I agree that it's a conundrum for them, but with this solution at least they're trying to do it in a non-obtrusive way that doesn't jeopardize the entire platform.
[+] [-] ksk|11 years ago|reply
um.. UNIX started out as a closed-source commercial OS.
[+] [-] abhimskywalker|11 years ago|reply
Just being optimistic about news, article writers. I guess we might soon see Economist stories with nice 140 character titles and eye-catchy pictures with a buy button to read full article, post which it's added to your twitter shelf. I wonder if this just might prove to be the payment mechanism needed for such content consumption. Somewhat similar to the app-store economy, twitter might become the content-store. Let's see...
Though I hope the dominant commerce part is kept as a separate tab perhaps like "Discover" tab, as I guess I wouldn't want to have my twitter stream as a series of ads. One or two "buy" tweets might be ok though I think... Will have to wait and watch how this goes.
[+] [-] GregorStocks|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fideloper|11 years ago|reply
One such thing would be an eBook or similar that you'd buy from someone you know or know of on Twitter.
[+] [-] softbuilder|11 years ago|reply
I really, truly do not understand Twitter's thinking. I'm sure on someone's spreadsheet of imaginary numbers it looks more attractive to be a billboard, but Twitter had the opportunity to be a true platform. A platform gives you control. It's a longer-term play, but my goodness the opportunities missed. Including this one, which could have been in play years ago.
Whether people will actually use this feature is a whole other question.
[1] http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/sell-simply
Edit: Clarify first P.
[+] [-] stdbrouw|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pbreit|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kkl|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mkr-hn|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rattray|11 years ago|reply
https://www.dropbox.com/s/sed9ewxz25turey/Screenshot%202014-...
[+] [-] psaintla|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dacort|11 years ago|reply
<meta property="twitter:item:variant1:id" value="n6NDAWFNqjkNZftJWq0BQw==" /> <meta property="twitter:item:variant1:title" value="Small" /> <meta property="twitter:item:variant1:inventory_count" value=1 /> <meta property="twitter:item:variant1:price" value=75000000 /> <meta property="twitter:item:variant1:tax_category" value="included_in_price" /> <meta property="twitter:item:variant1:last_updated" value=1409259500000 /> <meta property="twitter:item:variant1:attribute1:text" value="Small" />
[+] [-] WoodenChair|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] piyushpr134|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Erwin|11 years ago|reply
You "just" need to get enough users to install the scanning software; maybe the next iPhone will come with Apple Shopping that scans all text you see and all images for the metadata/watermarks. As it detected a product, the new second $ button lights up. Press down on it for a second, and the product information pops up (Apple Shopping knows your size/address/credit card already of course). Hold it down for a few seconds longer, and you've made your purchase. Don't, and a few weeks later maybe the seller gets to send you a 10% off coupon.
Actually, Amazon's phones might already have something like that, letting you scan a bar code in a physical shop but purchase from Amazon.
[+] [-] pjc50|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johnrob|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mahmoudimus|11 years ago|reply
Bolting on fulfillment to a twitter-purchase seems like a lot of work, but as another commentator said, I'm cautiously optimistic.
[+] [-] grayclhn|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brianbreslin|11 years ago|reply
[edit] I say this after having tried every single one of their ad products without any success.
[+] [-] liotier|11 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] j_s|11 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] Grue3|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] weavie|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ardahal|11 years ago|reply