Twitter Shops Goes Live in Beta to Grow E-Commerce

Twitter is introducing a new shopping feature called Twitter Shops, which will allow merchants to set up their virtual shops with up to 50 products being showcased on their profile. The feature is aimed at extending the e-commerce activities on the platform.

However, Twitter Shops are still in beta for select merchants and managed partners in the United States, but the feature is expected to be extended globally in the coming weeks. The new feature currently is free to use and aims at encouraging users explore a merchant’s selection and buy products from their website.

Facebook and Instagram, which are owned by Meta, are the leaders in social e-commerce category. However, unlike Instagram’s native shops, Twitter shops do not allow customers to purchase a product directly on the social media platform but rather view the listing and be redirected to the merchant’s website to complete the transaction.

Twitter Shops are the next phase of the feature the platform began testing in summer last year that allowed brands to showcase up to five products in the “Shop Module” at the top of their profiles, which could be browsed by users. The newly introduced Twitter Shops now allow merchants to feature a larger catalog of products.

Merchants can upload these products via CSV file that can contain up to 10,000 products, including their name, description, pricing, and other details, allowing the merchant to easily rotate between a selection of 50 products to showcase on their Twitter profiles.

Twitter Shops are currently available in the United States during their testing phase, but the company plans to recruit and onboard more merchants and managed partners as beta participants in the future before making the feature available on a wider scale.

In addition to the Twitter Shops, the company has also been testing a new livestreaming shopping platform, which lets people purchase clothing, accessories and other items while watching live videos from the brand about the products. These features are part of the Twitter Shopping Manager, which is an entry point where merchants can set up their products to showcase on their profiles.

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