Twitter has been up to a fair amount of stuff lately. There’s an alleged Podcast tab coming, and we’re still waiting on its Articles feature to drop. Along with that, the company seems to want users to sell their products. The Shops module lets people window shop a bunch of items different people are selling.
Twitter Shops will let you sell your items
A while back, Facebook let users sell their own products, and that opened the gates for using social media as a commerce platform. Twitter is looking to do the same thing but differently. Instead of offering peer-to-peer selling, this feature will let companies post their products for people to check out. Last year, Twitter announced the Twitter Shopping feature. When you go to a company’s page, you’ll see a carousel showing some of what the company is selling. This new Twitter Shops feature will be a bit better. You’ll see a “View Shop” button right above the account’s tweets. Tapping on it will open a separate page full of up to 50 of the company’s products. You won’t buy the product through Twitter, however. When you tap on an item, you’ll be taken to the company’s site. From there, you’ll go through the transaction.
This is in beta testing (also, Android users will be upset)
Since this feature is in beta testing, it’s not widely available just yet. Right now, Twitter is testing this out on a limited selection of companies: All I Do Is Cook, Verizon, Gay Pride Apparel, the Latinx In Power Podcast, and Arden Cove. This means that it will be some time before you can start selling your items. Not only that, but the test is also limited to only iOS users. Though that’s to be expected at this point, it’s still a bummer for Android users.
