Twitter's ‘Buy Button’ Holiday Push
Not Just For Christmas?
Twitter have recently taken it upon themselves to roll out a bunch of shiny new features. Following this week’s news that the second largest social media network has hugely upgraded its search engine (it now contains around half a trillion entries, which is quite a lot), Twitter have now announced that their oft-underutilised ‘buy button’, which debuted back in September, is about to undergo its very own seasonal sales push. Unfortunately for those of us who serve under the queen and have relatively healthy diets, it looks like the pressies will only be on offer to American Twitter users. If you are reading from the US, don’t think it’s a given that the service will necessarily come to you; when it was announced back in September, it was revealed that the service would only come to “a small percentage of US users.” |
| source: dailygenius.com |
Assuming the offer is going to be available to all US users, anyone following the AMC Theaters Twitter account will be eligible to purchase a 30 dollar gift card (another pretty big clue the UK are going to get bugger all) directly through Twitter's magical button, and doing so will bring with it a whole host of mega awesome perks. If you're one of the 251,000 people who follow the cinema chain, you'll also receive a small thing of free popcorn for every $30 you spend from now on (which doesn’t sound like a lot, but you have to remember: cinema prices. That’s pretty much buy one get one free).
Although this offer is a long way away from being enough to encourage millions to hop on board with Twitter's attempts at e-commerce, it’s interesting in that it shows that Twitter haven’t given up on the whole money transfer thing. By actively pushing it and making new partnerships - especially so close to Christmas - they're showing that their buy button is still alive and well.
But could it be for life, or, like whoever wins this year’s X Factor (is Gareth Gates still in it?), will it just stick around for Christmas?
 |
| source: cargocollective.com |
Amid reports that Twitter's stock is dropping, it’s no surprise to see them doing whatever they can to claw back a bit of cash in time for the holiday season. After all, the longer their userbase numbers just tread water (recent reports have suggested that their growth is now slower than Instagram’s, and only marginally higher than Facebook’s, where everyone already has an account anyway), the longer it will take for their share prices to earn the spike they're so desperate for. The more companies that hop on board with their buy button, then, the better.
If it all goes tweets up, maybe they should follow Facebook and Snapchat's lead and introduce a money sharing service, from which they can take a small cut. The French are already able to do it through Twitter (albeit unofficially), so why not take a look at their numbers and see if it’s worth investing in?
Emile is a postgrad from the University of Saint Mark and Saint John. He’s hoping to break into journalism or publishing, and won’t stop blogging until he’s managed it! Follow him @EmileAtSMF.
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Twitter's ‘Buy Button’ Holiday Push
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Friday, November 21, 2014
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Reviewed by Anonymous
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Friday, November 21, 2014
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