Twitter has disbanded its experimental commerce team
This means that Twitter has ceased development of its "Buy" button, which let users order goods and services straight from a tweet. The Buy button will still be around, but won't get new features, according to BuzzFeed.
The report indicates that Twitter is moving away from the concept of commerce on social media, as it hasn't panned out financially in the way that it would have hoped.
Instead, Twitter is reportedly reinvesting those resources in initiatives that are actually drawing advertising dollars, including customer service and dynamic product ads. It's possible that the idea of buying stuff straight from Twitter could be reintroduced, but it's been deemphasized by the company. The members of the company's commerce team have either left the company or have been re-assigned to other groups, according to BuzzFeed.
A Twitter representative said in an emailed statement that "we made a change 3 months ago to INCREASE our investment in commerce by moving fully into Dynamic Product Ads after seeing the great early results (2x the CTR, 2x the conversion rates) we talked about in our Q1 earnings call. We have more product, engineering and business focus on commerce as a result of focusing on DPAs. The bottom line is DPAs work for advertisers and we will continue to invest in that product."
Wall Street hasn't been loving Twitter recently: In April, its shares nose-dived after a revenue miss. And the company has been struggling to boost its user growth, which has stalled even as rivals such as Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram are growing.
