The idea of social commerce has received plenty of hype in recent years, but hasn’t always delivered on it. Both Facebook and Twitter are seemingly keen to rectify that state of affairs, with both making new moves yesterday. Facebook announced that it is testing a new Buy button on ads and page posts, which will enable people to buy products from those businesses without leaving Facebook. For now, it’s limited to “a few small and medium-sized businesses in the US”, but as it rolls out later, it could be a useful tool particularly for artists and labels running their own D2C stores for music, tickets and merchandise. Twitter, meanwhile, announced a new acquisition: it has bought payments infrastructure company CardSpring, which “helps merchants work with leading publishers to create online-to-offline promotions“. While Twitter has already been experimenting with e-commerce within its service, CardSpring will bolster its capabilities. “We’re confident the CardSpring team and the technology they’ve built are a great fit with our philosophy regarding the best ways to bring in-the-moment commerce experiences to our users,” as Twitter’s blog post put it.
Tools: platforms to help you reach new audiences
Tools: Kaiber
In the year or so since its launch, AI startup Kaiber has been making waves,…