YouTube’s been doing it, and so has Instagram. Facebook’s in on it too, and even TikTok. Why, even Pinterest isn’t letting itself fall behind. Truly, Live-Shopping has taken the online world by storm, with Twitter being the latest social media app to give Live-Commerce a try. Twitter hopes to maximize its eCommerce activity via the immediacy and engagement of retailer broadcasts. It’ll be interesting to see how Twitter will approach this front, seeing as, out of the current roster, it’s the one you’d least associate with shopping.

Twitter’s variation of live-stream shopping enables users to tune-in to live broadcasts, with the shopping options being displayed below the video feed. This presentation format will also allow users to either tune into the live Tweet discussions around the event, or check out the shop via a ‘Shop’ tab that’ll feature all the products mentioned in the broadcast.

Twitter explains:

“We are conducting our first test of Live Shopping in collaboration with Walmart, where they will be kicking off Cyber Week with singer, songwriter, dancer and social media superstar Jason Derulo for the first-ever shoppable livestream on Twitter. Starting at 7pm ET on Sunday, November 28, people can watch and shop from @Walmart (on iOS and desktop), where Jason will host a 30-minute variety show highlighting electronics, home goods, apparel, seasonal décor, surprise special guests and much more.”

‘Bird’ Shops

Walmart’s looking pretty much like a modern day superhero right now, at least in terms of adopting the next wave of digital commerce initiatives. Walmart has already partnered with TikTok and Snapchat on their respective Live-Shopping projects, so it’ll be interesting what kind of response it gets now that it has also taken up Twitter’s commerce push. With 1.2 million followers, the results with Walmart will potentially become a benchmark, sort of, for other brands who are considering doing something similar.

For the past year, Twitter has been developing a series of in-stream shopping options, with the live test launch of its coming ‘Shop Module’ for business profiles, back in July, signifying a major milestone with regards to the feature’s progress. The module itself is but one of several Twitter developments for its new ‘Professional Profiles’, now also in live-testing, which aim to enable Twitter to facilitate more in-stream engagement as well as drive more referral traffic directly from Tweet activity to better appeal to brands.

It’s important to note that Twitter did try in-app online shopping before, just that the initiatives it set in place back then lacked certain ‘necessities’ to effectively catch on. Select profile shop tabs and its ‘Product and Place Collections’ failed to generate the traction it wanted, which eventually led to the disbanding of Twitter’s commerce team in 2017. However, in line with the new developments and apparent rise of eCommerce, perhaps things will play out more to Twitter’s favor this time around.

The Wrap

The immediacy and interactive benefits of live-streaming, along with similar factors of eCommerce, when combined, could prove vastly beneficial for Twitter if it can learn to harness the opportunities presented to it. It could even in fact help Twitter take the next steps to further evolve the option, thus also evolving its platform.

Twitter has already proven to be an effective marketing and real-time news platform. Taking things a bit further to actually incorporate somewhat direct monetary options could just be what Twitter needed in order to substantially boost its efforts in line with meeting monumental goals.

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Sources 

https://bit.ly/32mRXXT