Through the tie-up, shoppers on Twitter who see a tweet with an Amazon product link will be able to drop it into their basket at the retailer by replying with the hashtag #amazonbasket in the UK or #amazoncart in the US, reported the FT.

Users will still need to go to the Amazon site to complete the purchase.

Twitter will not make any money from Amazon sales but hopes that it will encourage retailers and other companies to spend more money on advertising on the site.

Despite its popularity with consumers, social media has had limited success in generating ecommerce transactions. Last year, Twitter brought in former chief executive of Ticketmaster to work on mobile device commerce projects.

Twitter’s ‘cards’ – widgets within an individual tweet that are most commonly used to show photos or videos – are already used by online retailers to show more information when the user tweets a link to a product. However, consumers still have to click through to make a purchase.

Via RetailWeek