Twitter has teamed up with Amazon to allow the messaging network's more than 255 million users to add items to their Amazon carts with a simple hashtag.
After linking their accounts to Amazon, Twitter users can reply to any tweet that has an Amazon product with "#AmazonCart" to put the item in their virtual cart, CNET reported. The tweet doesn't obligate them to make a purchase, simply marking the item for the future.
While it's been established as an important entity in the social media realm, Twitter has struggled both with growth and profitability. The service relying on 140-character messages has around 255 million monthly active users, substantially fewer than Facebook's 1.3 billion members or even WhatsApp's 500 million.
Twitter has been depending on sponsored tweets from advertisers to make a profit, so the partnership with Amazon could be a new direction for its business model.
The San Francisco, Calif.-headquartered company doesn't get a cut of the revenue when Twitter users employ #AmazonCart, a spokeswoman told CNET. Amazon is also open to collaborating with other social networks, she said.
"We are certainly open to working with other social networks," she told CNET. "Twitter in particular offers a great environment for our customers to discover product recommendations from artists, experts, brands and friends."
What remains to be seen is whether or not Twitter users will embrace the hashtag--and use it for its intended purpose, rather than just ironically. Corporations have attempted to use hashtags and Twitter campaigns to their own detriment in the past.
A recent example of a derailed Twitter campaign comes from the New York City Police Department, which tried to use the hashtag "#myNYPD" to encourage community, only to be flooded with negative images of New York police.
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