Twitter announced its entry into e-commerce, will cross-border sellers usher in a new "trend"?

Twitter has announced in its second quarter report that it plans to move into e-commerce in the future.

Twitter to launch 'direct buy' feature

Twitter wants to bring more online shopping features to its platform as rivals Facebook and TikTok invest in the sector, its chief financial officer Ned Segal told the Financial Times in an interview .

Segal said Twitter plans to add "buy buttons" to ads , allowing users to buy things without leaving the Twitter platform . The "buy buttons" can also be used on corporate profile pages to increase conversion rates.

“We will continue to work hard to ensure that we can help transactions complete , whether they are cross-border or within the same region, with as few frictions as possible . Commerce is an important part of our long-term strategy, ” Siegel added.

TikTok and Facebook have already entered the field

Twitter 's "Buy Button" feature was launched in 2017, but at the time, the feature failed to gain traction and was abandoned .

But as more and more people spend their time on mobile phones and computers , shopping directly on social platforms has become the choice of more and more people.

According to eMarketer's forecast, US social commerce sales will grow 35.8% in 2021 to US$36.62 billion, and are expected to reach US$79.64 billion by 2025.

TikTok and Facebook have already begun to expand into the field of "social commerce". According to the eMarketer report, Facebook is the largest social commerce platform in the United States.

In April 2021, TikTok launched its e-commerce function in the UK, and in June began to invite Chinese cross-border sellers to settle in. TikTok also allows content creators to put links to their favorite products in their videos . Facebook launched the "Facebook Shop" in 2020. The platform is designed to "make it easy for businesses to set up a single online store for customers to visit on Facebook and Instagram."

In addition, these two social platforms have also begun to enter the field of live shopping. In December 2020, TikTok cooperated with Walmart in the United States to start its first live shopping event. In May this year, Facebook launched an e-commerce live event called "Live Shopping Fridays".

Overseas, social commerce is still a blue ocean market. Unlike mature e-commerce platforms such as Amazon, the e-commerce development of social platforms is still in its infancy, which may be a new "trend" for sellers.

Twitter

Social Commerce

E-commerce