Twitter launches two new features, more for commerce than user experience

Twitter has been doing a lot lately and its latest move involves testing two new features. One of the features is product and place pages and the other is product and place collections.

Both features, Twitter claims, make it easier for users to discover rich and relevant content about products and places on Twitter but something more sinister is afoot here.

Twitter has been trying to find ways to make money and this move is more inclined with that goal than easing user experience.

Amongst the initial pool of influencers and brands are musicians like Amanda Palmer, Ariana Grande, Demi Lovato, Cody Simpson, Steve Aoki, Reese Witherspoon, Michelle Phan and media companies like Penguin Random House, The Ellen Show, Warner Bros, Fox Home Entertainment and brands like Beats by Dre, Mountain Dew and Nike.

According to Twitter, users will now find and engage with the most relevant tweets, images and videos about products and places. This content, Twitter says, already exist in the millions of people that tweet about the products they buy, places they visit, books they’re reading or vacations they’re planning. All Twitter is doing now is curating it into far more structured streams.

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Product and places pages are the first thing that the company is testing. This is a new way to surface and organize relevant Tweets about products and places on dedicated pages. These images will not only feature images and video about the product but also will have additional information like a description, price, and an option to buy, book, or visit the website for more information.

“We’re starting to experiment with a small number of products and places. As we test, within your timeline you may see pages and collections of pages that are shared by influencers and brands,” the company said.

Example Tweet and expanded product page about “The Martian”.

The company gave an example of the ‘The Martian’ by Andrew Weir. Twitter will show you images and a description right above the tweets that are most timely and relevant to you. The tweets will be a combination from accounts you follow, relevant news updates, or popular content about the book.

In addition to pages, Twitter is also testing new ways the product and place collections. This allows influencers and brands to create and share Twitter collections of products and places. Users can visit the profiles of curators to view their collections. The feature is available with the latest version of Twitter on mobile.

Example collections shared by Demi Lovato and Nike.

Though the company claims otherwise and sells the collections feature as a way for users to browse rich collections from influencers, it is no doubt that this could appears more an attempt at commerce for both the influencers and brands. Already, from the collections that exist, the influencers and brands have curated things they want to sell.

It is not clear how Twitter will deal with this, if there are any plans to monetise any of this, or if this is already being monetised and the users are being tricked into it. It appears the latter that the former and that Twitter does not really care about how the users’ experience but about the bottom line, making money.

The feature is in its early phase and the company promises that in the coming months they will be testing more new experiences.