Twitter’s decision to go public was a painfully dumb one that will end in fire. But that doesn’t mean we won’t see all sorts of amusing spectacles in the meantime, like a new and vaguely ridiculous campaign to get you shopping on Amazon using a hashtag.
Here’s how it works, as explained by the promotional video: You link your Amazon and Twitter accounts, and when Amazon tweets something you want to buy, you tweet back the hashtag “AmazonCart.” That throws the item into your cart and you can buy it later. See? Incredibly convenient!
Equally convenient is how Amazon and Twitter both leave out what problem this solves and why anyone would do this. It’s telling that the first product used to hype this hashtag method of shopping was the infamous Banana Slicer. Apparently, there are people who are annoyed they have to leave their Twitter feed for even a microsecond to buy stuff featured in memes? We’re guessing? Also, who actually follows Amazon on Twitter, aside from other large corporations and their own employees?
Don’t get us wrong, the technology is undeniably neat, if entirely ridiculous. And presumably Twitter will be expanding this technology, both to other merchants and to allow people to buy products directly instead of put them in a cart. On paper, you can assemble buzzwords like “frictionless payments” and “market penetration” to make this sound good. And it could be useful for flash sales and the like, we suppose, although the linked accounts requirement is going to be ever so slightly awkward.
Still, it seems like inevitably something is going to go horribly wrong, here. Maybe we can add some popcorn to our Amazon Cart for when it happens.