Twitter launches 'buy' button

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 8 (UPI) -- Twitter will be encouraging users to pull out their wallets as they tweet with the launch of "buy" buttons on the microblogging site Monday.

The launch is going to effect a small number of U.S. users using the Twitter apps on the iOS and Android platforms. These select users will get offers from retailers not seen anywhere else and will be able to complete transactions in a few taps.

"This is an early step in our building functionality into Twitter to make shopping from mobile devices convenient and easy, hopefully even fun," group product manager Tarun Jain told USA Today.

Burberry, DonorsChoose, Pharrell and other entities are already launching their products with the feature.

This is the first major digital commerce move by Twitter since they hired former Ticketmaster CEO Nathan Hubbard as head of commerce just before their IPO.

Twitter faces similar merchandise targeted social media obstacles as its competitors Facebook and Pinterest. Social media users don't seem to care for shopping while they post. The company also faces the black stain of the recent data breaches of online shopping.

Twitter said it will encrypt all information and even though it does store user's information at the time of their first purchase, people can later remove it from their account.

"That has been the question all along. A lot of people have experimented with shopping and social and a lot of those experiments have not worked," said Gartner's research director in consumer technologies Brian Blau. "Twitter is being prudent. It's going to experiment to make sure the brands are offering the right kind of products and the right kind of buying experience."