If you’re an experienced Amazon customer you will be very
aware that Amazon remembers everything, even that potato peeler you glanced at
for two seconds, over two years ago. Amazon remembers all and will remind you
every day you log on. Now imagine that extending to your Twitter page!
Amazon has announced its intentions to revolutionise the way
we shop by introducing the ability to purchase items using Twitter. Well sort
of...
Rather than making drunken rendezvous with social networking
even more dangerous by adding in online shopping, #AmazonCart will function as
a reserve or “buy it later” button by connecting it to your Amazon account. We
can all have a sigh of relief. Once linked, responding with the hashtag to any
tweet containing an Amazon product URL will automatically add it to your
shopping cart. While I applaud Amazon for taking advantage of social networking
sites and constantly pursuing simpler methods for their customers to make
purchases, the reasoning behind the sudden existence of this feature extraneous
.
"While a novel idea, I think AmazonCart is a solution
in search of a problem," Patrick Salyer, CEO of social infrastructure
provider Gigya, informed Wired.co.uk. "Amazon has perfected the art of
online purchasing and checkout on its own properties. Getting consumers to
change their shopping behaviours can be extremely difficult and consumer
adoption will likely be a major hurdle."
Conversely, Salyer also adds that shopping has always had a
social element. "It`s important to note that retailers often see purchases
start on social networks like Twitter when consumers share products from
retailers` sites and recommend those products to their friends. This can
generate significant revenue for those retailers -- Dell most notably touts the
revenue it has generated from Twitter referrals. However, concepts like
"f-commerce" [online storefronts embedded into Facebook], have
resoundingly failed."
For Amazon traders this could open up the doors for not only
using their Twitter site as a marketing tool but also for making a few sales
themselves. With the rise of smart phones, mobile shopping and immediate access
to the internet when on the go it could potentially increase the amount of impulse
purchases by using their Twitter feed to reach customers.
