Whether or not it will be able to offer the sort of live commerce experience that resonates with consumers and delivers retailers’ objectives still remains to be seen. And its early days of Super Follow, subscriptions didn’t produce much revenue. For example, Twitter already had to kill its Stories feature (Fleets) due to lack of traction. But, in reality, only some of these things will actually work. Twitter today wants to be a home to live audio, creator subscriptions, newsletters, bitcoin tipping, NFTs, private communities and more. Its overabundance of new features released in the past year feel more like spaghetti being thrown at the wall to see what sticks, instead of a carefully planned roadmap. But Twitter - a place where users tend to track news, events, pop culture trends, politics and more - hasn’t yet defined itself as a platform. The event will also serve as a means of testing the Twitter user base’s appetite for live shopping, which today often takes place on other social apps, like Instagram and Facebook, on dedicated live commerce platforms and on video services like YouTube and TikTok.
Twitter says this is the first-ever e-commerce livestream on its platform, but it plans to bring more experiences like this to its customers in the future.
The stream will also be broadcast on /live, and across the retailer’s Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube accounts. Its Twitter livestream will focus on Cyber Deals and will kick off on November 28 at 7 PM ET in the U.S. Over the past year, it hosted more than 15 livestream events across five platforms, including YouTube, TikTok and its own website, among others. Walmart was a sensible first partner for the new effort, as the retailer has been increasingly investing in livestream events across social media.