Are People Really Going To Use #AmazonCart?

Have you ever been so compelled by a brand tweet that you just have to have their product now, or at least you have to buy it right now? And I’m not talking about some delectable food image or a late night delivery from Taco Bell, but rather a product like a book or gadget or something that you would normally go online to buy?

While I think the idea is a bit of a reach, the innovators at Amazon disagree as this past week they launched #AmazonCart, a Twitter/Amazon integration that allows Twitter users to add items to their cart by simply using the aforementioned hashtag in response to a tweet selling something with an Amazon shopping link.

By doing so it will put the item in your Amazon shopping cart and you will be able to go buy the item later

Here is a quick video from Amazon explaining how it works.

Will People Use #AmazonCart?

Over the past week Amazon has received a lot of coverage on their creation of the service and I will be the first to say it is an innovative idea, but the real question that I think marketers are all asking themselves is, will consumers use it?

The service in itself doesn’t actually provide any immediacy of purchase because all it really does is put the item in your cart to be purchased later.  Furthermore, I’m really not sure what kind of items will have enough supported data in a mere 140 characters that you will want to make a purchase commitment of any type without reading more about the item.

Personally speaking, I have never in 5 years of being on Twitter bought something as the result of a tweet.  However, I have to imagine that Amazon had some data that showed people would use the service because a company of their size with seemingly endless data wouldn’t spend their time developing a solution that wouldn’t work.  Would they?

The Real Use Case For #AmazonCart: The New Favorite Button For Shoppers

Perhaps the real use case for the product will be something different. All the talk about immediacy and on-demand purchasing is really just a misconception of what the #Amazoncart is going to be.

The way I see it, #AmazonCart is going to be a favorite button for Twitter power users who want to bookmark an item and go learn more about it later. Basically it is social media uninterrupted so people on the platform don’t leave the platform but when they do eventually show up on Amazon they have a cart full of goodies to explore and potentially buy.  The problem I suspect is when people finally do return to their Amazon cart they are going to have forgotten that they added the item to their cart because hashtags and most Twitter activity is real-time and not asynchronous.

Use Case Or Not, #AmazonCart isn’t Amazon Smart

Amazon is a brilliant company led by brilliant people, but I have to say that I think this one slipped through the cracks.

While there is no doubt that Twitter has become a dumping ground for marketers and their links, all I can really see from this experiment gone wrong is more marketers, more links and very little conversion.

However, I am okay with being proven wrong, but the day I feel compelled to fill my Amazon shopping cart with products in my Twitter stream is the same day I sign off from Twitter for the last time.  (Also read: I won’t be using this service) Begging a more important question, will you be using the #AmazonCart now or anytime soon?

This article was originally featured on Forbes and can be found here. 

Daniel Newman

Daniel Newman is the Principal Analyst of Futurum Research and the CEO of Broadsuite Media Group. Living his life at the intersection of people and technology, Daniel works with the world’s largest technology brands exploring Digital Transformation and how it is influencing the enterprise. From Big Data to IoT to Cloud Computing, Newman makes the connections between business, people and tech that are required for companies to benefit most from their technology projects, which leads to his ideas regularly being cited in CIO.Com, CIO Review and hundreds of other sites across the world. A 5x Best Selling Author including his most recent “Building Dragons: Digital Transformation in the Experience Economy,” Daniel is also a Forbes, Entrepreneur and Huffington Post Contributor. MBA and Graduate Adjunct Professor, Daniel Newman is a Chicago Native and his speaking takes him around the world each year as he shares his vision of the role technology will play in our future.