Social commerce has taken a knock on Twitter – Shop Spotlight

That social commerce will thrive on the wave of social media has been known for at least two years, though savvy analysts have already predicted it earlier. Twitter decided to reactivate its program from 7 years ago and got back on track.

Twitter announced a year ago that it was going to engage its audience in its own marketplace. Initially a Twitter Shops service, today called Spotlight, Twitter reports it provides a new shopping experience. Twitter, used to discuss and exchange opinions, has often served as a medium for sharing experiences about products. The platform said it was the right base to create a customer journey – from conversation to direct purchase. This process is to be facilitated by the appearance of a new button, visible after entering the profiles offering sales.

It is not a great discovery of this platform. Already in 2015, the service was combining with the button “buy now”, product pages and collections. It wasn’t that long ago, either, that Twitter invested in TapCommerce, which was to be responsible for developing the platform’s advertising capabilities, particularly in terms of targeting. Publishers will be able to tailor their ads to audiences based on their interests, keywords, gender, location, language and device type. Advertising can also leverage general knowledge of a phone user’s previous activity. What’s more, developers have been given the option to get tips in bitcoin via the Lightning Network.

– We believe in the power of conversation, which on Twitter is also conducted around product-related topics. As part of the pilot program, we’ll learn how our engaged and chatty community responds to products that evoke emotion (like. The new jersey of your favorite sports team) or that have a real impact on you (e.g. cosmetics for skin care). This is a chance for us to find out what kind of shopping experience people expect from Twitter – we read in a message from Twitter.

How Twitter’s Spotlight works?

With the help of understanding the process comes Twitter itself. The user should go to the seller’s profile with the store function enabled. Button “Display a store” will be available over the tweets of a particular creator. When you click on it, you will see an online store, created directly on the platform, in which you can scroll through the products offered. Clicking on a product opens a browser in the app, where you can learn more about the product and checkout on the merchant’s website. In addition to Spotlight, we can also make use of live shopping and a shopping manager. An example of investing seriously in social commerce, in addition to this year’s shopping spaces, was the creation of a demonstration of the platform’s shopping capabilities in 2021. We’re talking, of course, about partnering with Walmart and Jason Derulo, who did a live stream of the shopping experience last year.

Twitter wants to support creators and brands that visit Twitter to do business and make money. Currently, the functionality can only be used in the United States, on hardware from Apple. Companies that are already using the solution are: Verizon, ArdenCove, LatinxInPower, GayPrideApp and AllIDoIsCookUS . For now, people in the U.S. who use Twitter in English on iPhones’ll be able to browse and interact with stores on Twitter.

I wonder how this project will develop after Elon Musk took over the platform.