Online retailer Amazon has announced a partnership with Twitter that allows users to add products to their shopping carts by tweeting a special hashtag.<\/p>\n
They can do so by replying to tweets containing a link to an Amazon product with #amazoncart in the US and #amazonbasket in the UK.<\/p>\n
Users will still need to go to Amazon to pay and complete the purchase.<\/p>\n
The move comes as firms are looking at ways to use social media platforms as tools to attract customers.<\/p>\n
“Ultimately it is all about conversations that people are having on various platforms such as Twitter and Facebook about what interests them,” said Sanjana Chappalli, Asia-Pac head of LEWIS Pulse, a firm specialising in digital marketing.<\/p>\n
“Brands are keen to tap into these platforms, not least because they have hundreds of millions of active users.”<\/p>\n
Win-win?<\/strong><\/p>\n The move also comes just days after Twitter reported a net loss of $132m (\u00a378m) for the first quarter.<\/p>\n The number of active users on the social network reached 255 million in the first three months of 2014, up 5.8% on the previous quarter. However, that growth was below analysts’ expectations.<\/p>\n There have been concerns that the pace of growth the Twitter has seen in the past years may be slowing, which may hurt its revenues.<\/p>\n Ms Chappalli said the tie-up with Amazon was likely to help Twitter engage its users better and as result attract more advertisers.<\/p>\n “For Twitter the revenue model is based on not just on the number of active users but also on how much time those users spend on the platform,” she said.<\/p>\n “This deal provides them a good chance to leverage on other sites such as Amazon to help push the engagement rates up.”<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Amazon said the partnership would make it easier for users to purchase products they saw on their Twitter timeline.<\/p>\n