Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

Twitter has finally realized that people don’t use it to buy things

By Saqib Shah May 26, 2016

Twitter Founder — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Twitter is reportedly putting a halt to its e-commerce projects in order to focus on its core experience, namely the live tweeting service it has always provided.

As a result, Twitter’s commerce team has been disbanded, with individuals slotted into other departments at the company, according to BuzzFeed News.

The e-retail initiative, started by former CEO Dick Costolo, included a ‘buy’ button that was often integrated into branded product pages on the platform.

The problem, however, was that almost no one ever purchased anything via Twitter. In fact, some analysts now warn that the entire social media retail bubble may be about to pop. The likes of Pinterest and Facebook also attempted to attract revenue by placing similar buying options on their networks. But consumers have ignored social media, and have continued to flock to mobile retail sites instead.

Twitter's 'buy' button featured on a product page — Twitter’s ‘buy’ button featured on a product page Image used with permission by copyright holder

Although its “buy” button remains active, Twitter has chosen to instead focus on dynamic product ads. The latter are targeted advertisements shown to people based on their browsing activity. Twitter recently revealed that these ads achieve double the click-through rates and conversions of promoted tweets.

Twitter’s current leader, Jack Dorsey, doesn’t seem to be concerned with people buying things through the platform. Since taking back the reins in October of last year, he has made it very clear that he envisions the service as a place for live interactions. Dorsey has pinned his hopes on tweaking the current Twitter framework in an effort to attract new users and appease its fans.

For newbies, the platform has eliminated the inconvenience of finding and following its influencers, refining the Twitter experience using curated news feeds and an algorithmic timeline. For its outspoken supporters, it is broadening the amount of leverage they can get from its 140-character tweets without completely scrapping that core experience. Finally, but no less crucially, Dorsey is focusing on integrating livestreams — extending to Periscope and beyond — into its platform.

Dorsey clearly has a firm grasp on Twitter’s strengths and, it seems, e-retail was never its strong point.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Saqib Shah is a Twitter addict and film fan with an obsessive interest in pop culture trends. In his spare time he can be…

Mobile

Jack Dorsey resigns as CEO of Twitter, hands reins to CTO Parag Agrawal

Jack Dorsey, co-founder and former CEO of Twitter

It looks like Twitter founder Jack Dorsey is leaving the chief executive's office once again — but this time, it's by choice.
Sources within Twitter first shared the news with CNBC earlier this morning, and it’s now been confirmed by Dorsey himself — quite appropriately via a Tweet on his social media platform.
https://twitter.com/jack/status/1465347002426867720?s=21
While the original reports didn’t have much to say about why Dorsey was stepping down, or when it would be happening, it didn’t take long for the erstwhile CEO to share the news himself. In his tweet, Dorsey includes a screenshot of the email that he sent internally to Twitter employees, describing it as part of his desire for Twitter “to be the most transparent company ever.”
Dorsey explains that although he will continue to serve on the board until the end of his term next spring, as of today, he is officially handing over the reins of CEO to Chief Technology Officer Parag Agrawal, as confirmed by the company’s board of directors. The board also named Bret Taylor as the new chairman of the board, He will succeed Patrick Pichette in that role.
In his internal email, Dorsey also shared that he has no plans to remain on the board after his term expires, as he feels “it’s really important to give Parag the space he needs to lead.”
Dorsey says that he’s leaving because he feels it’s best to separate a company from its founders, and that now is the right time to do so. “I believe it’s critical a company can stand on its own, free of its founder’s influence or direction,” Dorsey said in the message to Twitter employees.
Based on the message, it appears that Dorsey has been planning this for a while. He noted that he’s been working hard “to ensure this company can break away from its founding and founders.” It’s just been a matter of finding the right person to take over the helm, and Dorsey had been grooming Agrawal for some time, due to “how deeply he understands the company and its needs.”
“Parag has been behind every critical decision that helped turn this company around. He’s curious, probing, rationale relative, demanding, self-aware, and humble. He leads with heart and soul, and is something I learn from daily. My trust in him as our CEO is bone deep,” Dorsey told employees in the internal email.

Dorsey's past with Twitter has been marred by controversies
Over the years, Dorsey has had a somewhat tumultuous relationship with the company that he helped to create in 2006. He initially served as CEO until 2008, but was pushed out of the role after his co-founder Evan Williams and the board felt that he was unfit to lead the growing social media company.
While Dorsey remained with Twitter as chairman of the board, he refocused most of his attention elsewhere, forming the popular mobile payment company Square. Once that was up and running, Dorsey rejoined Twitter in early 2011 to focus on product development, dividing his time between that and his ongoing work at Square.
After four more years of struggling to come up with a long-term vision, Twitter’s board returned Dorsey to the position of permanent CEO of Twitter in fall 2015, replacing Dick Costolo, who had taken over from Williams in 2010.
During Dorsey’s second tenure, he’s presided over a social network that’s faced some significantly new and different challenges.

Mobile

Don’t buy the Apple Watch Series 3 anymore — it’s not worth it

After Apple announced the long-awaited Apple Watch Series 7, you may have found your eyes, and especially your wallet, drawn to the idea of the Apple Watch Series 3 dropping its price to a downright affordable $199. While it won't have any of the features of the Series 7, like upgraded specs, improved battery life, a fancy new design, and a plethora of new features, it'll come in at $200 less, compared to the $399 Series 7. This may sound like a deal on its face. But we advise against falling for this ruse.

Here's why:
A design that hasn't aged well
First, put this timeline into perspective. Apple released the Series 3 in September 2017. The design back then didn't put it out of step with other smartwatches on the market. At release, we even praised it in our review as a "joy to use" and the "best smartwatch you can buy." That was true then, but in 2021 the design has started to show its age.

Computing

Don’t make this key mistake when choosing a new gaming laptop to buy

RTX 30-series laptops.

Do you know which 30-series mobile graphics card to buy? It's a more difficult task than you might think. Nvidia currently offers eight distinct mobile graphics cards: The RTX 3050, 3050 Ti, 3060, 3070, and 3080, as well as the Max-Q variations of those last three. And then there are 42 distinct versions of these cards across the range, leading to widely varied performance depending on the version you get.

This comes down to the TGP, or Total Graphics Power, of the GPU. When designing a laptop, manufacturers have to decide how much board power to allocate to the graphics card, and they have some wiggle room. The more power the card receives, the faster its clock speed can be, which changes the raw power of the card.