Friday Fun - What if Twitter had REAL shopping?
Ok - so this whole post is meant as pure fantasy. Though, in reality, it is a viable question given the amount of traffic Twitter generates and their focus on driving REVENUE on their platform. What is Twitter had a REAL shopping platform? Where they earned REVENUE based on sales?
So, nobody asked me my opinion - but, that's the point of this post. Perhaps the brains over there are already on to this - I wouldn't doubt it.The approach here would be to take advantage of their already existing addressing protocol (search.twitter.com, api.twitter.com, etc.) and launch a shopping area at http://shop.twitter.com. Something like this perhaps?
Ok - just a snapshot, but you get the point and you can hopefully see the appeal. Twitter's already working with partners to get them to sponsor tweets and put these unique ads into your streams. Well, this isn't so much of a shift as it is a further exploration of many of these relationships.
Dell is arguably the most successful retail seller on Twitter. In order to do this, Dell has multiple channels set up to sell all throughout Twitter. But, they are dependent on people following their Twitter handles. Shift to this strategy and Dell can now push specific products and/or specials through the Deal of the Day that is no longer subject to people following their unique Twitter handles.Example: Twitter user (me - @jpomie) visits http://shop.twitter.com and sees a GREAT deal on a Samsung television. It is absolutely great - I can tweet it right there into my stream. Right there, the shopping platform extends its reach and it can potentially be retweeted by many people who may find the deal useful.
Now, take it a step farther and allow Twitter users to input keywords, brands, etc. that they would like to know about into the Shop settings area and their stream will then populate with anything relevant at set time parameters. Or, they can just ask to have the Deal of the Day inserted into their stream on a regular basis. Again, allowing these brands to extend their reach and also be subject to retweets. Something like this perhaps?
It would be great to see something like this (if I sign up for it to be sure - not the spam approach) as it makes the stream not just about 140 characters - whitty comments or not :)
If you look at the above example of http://shop.twitter.com, you can see this can adapt to a lot of scenarios. The Gap promotion through Groupon was highly successful in terms of the amount of the discount certificates sold. Why could this be accomplished here in the same manner? It could be independent or in collaboration with any of these players. Just imagine the viral capacity of the Twitter ecosystem . .Additionally, Twitter could really provide some focus on non-profit organizations. They already are working to sell Fledgling Wine to donate money to wipe out literacy in poor countries. This would seem like a great platform to push this message out on and achieve success for these types of organizations. There are MANY approaches that can be taken with this type of shopping platform.The transactions and subsequent payment for these products are really exciting to think about because there's so much there to tap into as part of this platform approach. Just from the payment side as an example - a Twitter user could sign up for automated payments through the Shop in the settings and would only need to hit Buy and the entire transaction is complete (One Tweet Pay!) - all done behind the scenes. And, that exciting feature could be extended outside of their environment and would make for a very appealing payment mechanism.Ok - I've had my fun and now it is time to return to my regularly scheduled programming. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Friday Fun - What if Twitter had REAL shopping?
Cheers!
Are you kidding me? 
