Today twitter has announced a new "buy" button allowing fans in the U.S. to purchase merch, music or other wares directly from within a tweet.
Those taking part in the initial rollout include Brad Paisley, Eminem, Panic! at the Disco, Wiz Khalifa,Ryan Adams, Soundgarden, Home Depot, Burberry, GLAAD and Global Citizen. Nathan said: "We're introducing this product with the intention of scaling it up to as many merchants and fans as there are in the world... but we're starting small. Tomorrow it will start with a small percentage of our user base and the number of artists that you see, but in the coming weeks and months it will ramp up from there.
He also added that, "... with just a few taps, you've purchased that product and it's on its way to your inbox or front door.... there are a large number of artists we're working with as a part of this test, and there is a reason for that... Twitter brings artists and fans together like no other platform can, and this gives artists the ability to reach and connect to not just the fans that follow them, but all of the fans who are having a conversation about them. The point of this in large part is to bring together artists, first and foremost -- along with brands and charities and others -- more closely with their fans, and to help fans in a really easy and simple way connect with the artists that they love... They know how to handle logistics and customer care," he says. "But the struggle that I think a lot of direct-to-fan platforms have had is distribution, and reaching a wide-scale audience of followers. Well, that's exactly what Twitter is, Twitter is the place where quite literally millions of fans connect with the artists that they love. What we've done is create a way for artists to have that direct conversation with fans, and now, when it's appropriate, to turn those conversations into transactions in a way that's fun and meaningful for fans and feels right for the artists... There's a self-regulating process that happens on Twitter, which is if you're alienating your followers, they're going to leave... It's the same approach that Twitter has taken as a whole with native advertising; we had to find ways to bring advertising into the platform in a way that enhances the experiences, and doesn't detract from it. That's what [Twitter revenue chief]Adam Bain and his revenue team has really innovated on, it's why Twitter has become the business that it is, because we've figured out how to do that well. Similarly, artists, brands and charities have to do the same thing. This is just a tool that closes the gap between discovery of a product and the actual conversion moment... certainly much smaller than the interest or demand is, and that's because we want to make sure we're building a really great experience for our users. So we're starting small to test the waters, to make sure that the experience is really great for everyone involved, and then, when things are working, we'll begin to roll it out fairly quickly. I think as we move into Q3 and Q4 you'll see us scale up the number of artists working with us significantly... it's not costing the artists any more to work with us. The truth is we're testing a bunch of different monetization models, but we're not really focused on that right now. Our focus is building a really great user experience that lets fans buy in the most fun and easy way possible, and building a really great artist onboarding experience so that it's easy for them through whatever direct-to-fan platform they use to sell directly to the fan base on Twitter... have all been deliberate tests to understand how consumers and our users interact with commerce on Twitter. What we're launching today [Sept. 8] is really the culmination and the evolution of a lot of that work, based on a bunch of the learnings that we took from those initiatives... You'll see a lot of merch and less music out of the gate... but when we sell music, those sales will be Billboard charting. We'll have a variety of partners through whom we sell music. Out of the gate you're going to see more physical goods, VIP experiences, and things like that... This lets them have a one-to-one relationship with everyone who's buying the album, who's in the venue that night for the show, or who is having a conversation about that artist and may not have fully moved down the purchase funnel to buy something from the artist... It allows the artist to reach that person at whatever stage they are in the discovery process and turn them into a fan and into a customer.... [Ticketing] is something that we know a lot about... What's great about this [e-commerce] product is it's built to sell anything. The history of Twitter is we create these products and we put them in the hands of our users, and they teach us the best use cases. We've built this, and we're going to put it into the hands of artists, and we're going to see what they do with it... We think about commerce as being a stand-alone proposition for why you use Twitter... Our mission is to build a business that parallels the amazing growth of the advertising business. As a company, we're trying to reach every person on the planet, and these are tools that are designed to help the artists on our platform do exactly that."
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