Twitter makes it easier to find products

Social networks are a little like a double-edged sword for product makers. You know that it’s easier to connect with potential consumers directly but there’s a whole vast ocean of other products and makers so competition feels a little higher.

Twitter has recognised that and might just be about to make our lives easier. In a new blog post by Product Manager Amaryllis Fox (good name!) she discusses how they are making it easier for people to find “rich and relevant content” about both products and places on the micro-blogging platform.

The first step they are taking is to test a new way to organise relevant tweets on a particular product. You’ll have images and videos along with a description, price and an option to buy. It’ll probably look a lot like the Google product ages. These pages will often by shared by influencers so will start to come up in your feed.

It isn’t just consumers who will have control of those pages but also brands themselves. Influencers are curating rich collections of items. The list of curators will widen over time. These collections are viewable on iOS and Android, enabling people to search through the collections.

So how will this help product makers? At the moment it seems like to get a profile you might need to know an influencer but we’re at early days. Google has made it much simpler for product makers to offer a more curated search experience through Google Plus and Business Pages and it’s likely Twitter will expand into the same thing. It makes sense to extend the network so it becomes more like a search facility as well as a micro-blogging platform and to be able to share images, video and have a link for people to buy would offer a more designed experience for product makers, helping them to showcase their wares.

Will it take off? Who knows. It’ll definitely be a major step for e-commerce and retail manufacturers but whether consumers take them up on it is another matter. Social networks continually evolve and audiences shift. It could become much easier for people to use just one app to browse, shop and buy.

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