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Twitter: The new online shopping space?

From 140 characters to possibly as many different applications

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Since its inception in 2006, Twitter has slowly and steadily launched itself into a dominant position in the social media universe, side by side with Facebook. But with the Zuckerberg giant maximising its diversity with video sharing, games and apps over the years, Twitter has made sure it will not soon fall by the wayside. And it’s surprising how much can be done with a 140 character ceiling. Video and article sharing are a completely normal aspect of Twitter now, but it wasn’t always that way. So what’s on the big bird’s menu these days?

Well, for starters, Twitter partnered with online payment startup, Stripes, to allow users to buy products without ever leaving their Twitter feed. Launched on September 8, a few partner retailers like Fancy, Gumroad, and Musictoday, can tweet a product advertisement with a handy “Buy Now” button at the bottom. As if it wasn't already easy enough to splurge your month’s salary shopping online, the facility even allows you to enter in your shipping and credit details right there in your feed and place an order. Twitter encrypts and saves your information, so your next purchase is a lot easier, but they do allow the safer option to just erase it as well. All this in addition to the purchase facilities Twitter has already been offering for a while now; discounts for American Express card users who tweet their purchases, the “add to cart” feature on Amazon product tweets, and allowing Starbucks users to tweet a coffee to someone else.

The facility is still in the testing phase, so you can find a list of retail partners available here. Available only for the iOS and Android official Twitter apps.

If you wish to save a little money instead of spending it all or just want to move some moolah around, Twitter has got you covered here as well. The company partnered with French bank BPCE earlier this month, to allow users with their bank’s credit card and a French mobile number to transfer money with their tweets. The system requires that both sender and recipient have the S Money app, available on the Google Play Store, and then money can be transferred with a simple tweet containing the amount and recipient’s name. Since the users’ twitter accounts have been linked with their bank accounts, no other login is required. And while that may sound dangerous, should you have your phone stolen, it wouldn't be the easiest thing for the thief to tweet that money to himself now would it? Perhaps there’s hope for some of us lazy ones around the world, but that would have to wait. The facility is only available in France as of now.

But Twitter’s newest test run seems to be, by far, the most exciting one yet. The company re-launched its Audio Card feature on October 16, with SoundCloud as their first official partner, and iTunes following close behind. Titled @TwitterMusic, the feature lets you share a music or audio clip from Soundcloud, or listen to audio in your Twitter feed, even if you minimize the tweet. And @iTunesMusic has roped in a few artists to share their music via tweets, that you can click on to listen to and purchase right there, without having to navigate to the iTunes store.

Have a listen to NASA’s first audio tweet.

And the Foo Fighters unveiling their new single through iTunes on Twitter

You can find a link to Soundcloud partners here

And iTunes partners here

So basically, I can listen to an interesting song that iTunes tweeted while I purchase a new shirt from another product tweet, then go back and buy the song because I loved it so much. Hopefully, the banking facilities extend to our neck of the world sometime soon. I'll clearly need to be careful not to bankrupt myself on Twitter, but the new features sure pack a punch. 

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