Twitter has been making noise about an e-commerce solution for some time now, and if reports are to be believed, the microblogging site is close to finalizing the details of the platform. Primarily, Twitter is working to close a deal with Stripe, which would be an ideal back-end solution for making Twitter-based purchases. From a Front-End perspective, Twitter is in discussions with several e-commerce outlets to arrange purchase through feeds. And according to code found on Fancy.com – which points to mock-ups of a potential Twitter Commerce solution – Twitter is looking for Twitter Commerce tweets to appear within users’ streams, much like Promoted Tweets that advertise products, in addition to working within the Discover section to tailor content to users’ wants and follows. At that point, Twitter would prompt you to enter your credit card information, and handle the purchase from there.
It’s all part of Twitter’s plan to add revenue streams as quickly as possible in light of its IPO. In order to sustain its initial success the company now must worry about erasing the common conception that it is a non-profitable startup, and adding new sources of revenue quickly – and effectively – is one powerful way of doing just that. Whether users take to it, however, will be the most important question facing Twitter’s user experience team as they try to make the platform not only user-friendly, but readily accessible.
