Over the past two decades or so, the digital sphere has become a major part of our everyday lives. The creation of E-commerce has allowed for people to turn their digital needs into physical ones by simply purchasing products online and having them delivered right to your doorstep.
Social media giants Facebook and Twitter have also seen the value of this growing trend and in an effort to capitalize on this market, have started integrating e-commerce services into their existing platforms.
Twitter recently acquired CardSpring – a company that develops software to allow digital transactions between vendors and consumers using credit card information. By purchasing items on Twitter, users are able to receive special discount codes from tweets sent out by vendors. If the code is provided during a transaction, the user will receive a discount on the product. Twitter’s E-commerce platform has not yet fully launched, however they’ve begun testing a ‘shop now’ button that accompanies advertisements on the website – and already boast big plans for the future!
But Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook isn’t one to be left behind… Like Twitter, Facebook has also shown a keen interest in the E-commerce sector and is currently experimenting with a ‘buy’ button on all advertisements.
Facebook ads are shown to users depending on the pages the user has liked and are therefore tailored to fit that individual’s interests. Customers are also offered the option of saving records of all transactions made on the website, and choosing whether or not they want to display their purchased products on their profiles. Facebook currently does not generate any revenue from its E-commerce platform which according to the latest reports, is also still in the ‘testing’ phase.
By combining E-commerce and social networking these two tech titans stand to become even more powerful, not just in a ‘networking’ sense but now in a ‘physical’ sense too. These ‘minor’ additions to the existing platforms encouraging E-commerce will mark the dawn of a new way of how we look; and how we use social media today.