Marketing Digest

Twitter’s New Amazon Feature: Use #AmazonCart to Add Items to Cart

Twitter’s New Partnership with Amazon: Use #AmazonCart or #AmazonBasket to Add Items

Have you ever seen a tweet with an Amazon product link and wished you could save it without having to change apps or type in a password? Thanks to a new feature which Amazon launched on Twitter today, users can now add items to their Amazon shopping carts for review or purchase later on.

Users can reply to any tweet that contains an Amazon product link—such as tweets posted by the official Amazon Twitter account, and tweets posted by Amazon’s affiliates and sellers. Users should then add the hashtag #AmazonCart in the United States and #AmazonBasket in the United Kingdom. The items will be waiting in the users’ carts or baskets the next time they log into Amazon.

This handy new feature allows Twitter users to quickly add items to their Amazon carts or baskets and continue browsing their Twitter feeds. Aside from ensuring an uninterrupted experience on Twitter, saving items to carts or baskets enables users to review products they’re thinking of purchasing when it’s more convenient for them.   

Of course, this feature only works if your Amazon account is connected to your Twitter account. According to Amazon, “By connecting your Twitter and Amazon accounts, you are telling Amazon that #AmazonBasket requests coming from your Twitter account should be added to your Amazon.co.uk Shopping Basket. Without that link, Amazon would not know to which Amazon customer’s Amazon.co.uk Shopping Basket to add the product.”

Concerned about privacy? This feature may not be for you.

On the flipside, this feature only works if your Twitter account is public. “#AmazonBasket only works for public Twitter accounts and tweets. If your Twitter account is protected, only your followers can see your tweets. This means that #AmazonBasket won’t be able to see your replies and add the item to your Amazon.co.uk Shopping Basket.”

Interested in keeping your #AmazonCart or #AmazonBasket replies private? That option is foreign to this feature as well. “Most content is public on Twitter, so your #AmazonBasket replies will be visible to whomever you replied to, to those viewing the conversation, and on your own Timeline (unless your Twitter account is set to private).”

Twitter will not profit from the sales revenue.

RE/Code reports that Twitter isn’t turning its new partnership with Amazon into the major revenue driver that Wall Street has been waiting for. Representatives from both Twitter and Amazon have confirmed that Twitter will not profit from any sales that originate from the #AmazonCart or #AmazonBasket hashtags.

Twitter has yet to roll out a real commerce initiative that would allow its users to purchase products and services right in their Twitter news feeds. However, on the plus side, this partnership would enable Amazon shoppers to integrate Twitter more seamlessly into their shopping experience. If this partnership clicks, similar features might eventually roll out on more social media sites.

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