Is Twitter Shopping About to Go Live?

Twitter logo
Twitter logo

A mysterious Buy now button has started appearing in tweets received via the Twitter smartphone app

First spotted by Re/code, the Buy now button, when pressed, takes you to a checkout page that also launches in-app. The products on which the button has appeared range from designer bookcases to the Nest smart thermostat.

The products in question are being offered by Fancy.com, and when it was approached for a comment, the Buy now button disappeared.

Twitter is known for conducting experiments and testing the water with new ideas, many of which never make it past the development stage. It is equally known for quickly pulling features if they don’t seem resonate, such as direct messaging.

And while being able to make impulse buys while simultaneously sharing your thoughts on any trending topic may well fall into the former category, a similar feature already exists on the microblogging site.

In the U.S. and UK, Twitter members who also have Amazon accounts can add products to their Amazon carts by tweeting with #AmazonCart (or #AmazonBasket in the UK) as a reply when someone they follow tweets a link to a product sold on Amazon.

When it was launched in May, Amazon described it as “an exciting new way to add Amazon products to your cart, without leaving Twitter” and posted a video to YouTube to show how simple it was to use.