Twitter Inc (TWTR)

[JohnSamuel]

By Jennifer Booton , MarketWatch
E-commerce sales projected to reach $2.5 trillion by 2018
Imagine if Amazon.com and Pinterest had a baby.
Twitter Inc. (TWTR) is investing more resources in a visually-appealing e-commerce strategy it hopes will entice consumers to ditch the digital middleman and buy things directly off its platform.
On Friday, Twitter said it was testing product and collection pages, which will be dedicated pages that live separately, though are easily accessible, from the main scrolling news feed.
The product pages would each be focused on a particular product, such as a book or pair of Nike sneakers, and would list highly-sought information such as product description, price, a link to more information from the retail website, or a buy button to purchase the item right on Twitter. Product pages will also host tweets from the general tweeting population as a source of user reviews.
The pages would be a collection of top products handpicked by celebrities, aligned in an almost Pinterest -like photo format. While they won't initially all offer an option to buy the recommended collections, Twitter said it will test increased functionality in the coming months.
What's important here is that both of these create a more immersive experience for online shoppers, compared with the lone buy button that is attached to promoted tweets currently. Twitter has been testing the buy button since September.
The product and collection pages help to position Twitter as a product-centric shopping destination, rather than just a social-media platform -- a more social Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN), but with a prettier interface, like Pinterest .
This comes at a critical juncture for Twitter, which has been struggling to win back users and the confidence of Wall Street , and as the race to profit from the colliding worlds of social media and e-commerce becomes increasingly intense.
As a collection of total retail sales, e-commerce's share is expected to increase to almost 9% within the next three years, reaching $2.5 trillion in revenue by 2018, according to eMarketer.
SunTrust Robinson Humphrey analyst Robert Peck predicted that 2015 would be a potentially "breakout year" for e-commerce on rival social-media platform Facebook , though he named Google Inc. (GOOGL) , Pinterest , Snapchat and Twitter among the key risk factors to his models.
Facebook Inc. (FB) recently expanded its buy button project, which has been in testing for about a year, to certain Shopify Inc. (SHOP) clients. Pinterest has been testing a beta version of buyable pins for the last year.
Twitter has been trying to position itself in e-commerce for some time, but has gotten more aggressive with the strategy in 2015.
In April, it scooped up e-commerce advertising company TellApart, which specializes in cross-device retargeting through product ads.
The company's stock has underperformed the broader S&P 500 consistently over the past year. Its shares are down around 27% over the last three months, compared with a 1% increase for the broader S&P . They fell 0.1% to $35.81 in Monday afternoon trade.
In April, Twitter reported its weakest quarterly revenue growth, with sales of $436 million coming in below both its own internal, and Wall Street's , expectations, and lowered its full-year outlook.
This prompted outspoken investor Chris Sacca in an 8,500-word report earlier this month to demand that Twitter make e-commerce a company priority, and led to the eventual announcement that CEO Dick Costolo will step down early next month.
- Jennifer Booton ; 415-439-6400; [e-mail]
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06-22-15 1635ET