Is Twitter Saying Bye-Bye to Buy Buttons?

While its stock price has apparently bottomed out after an epic fourth quarter plummet at the end of 2015, these days, Twitter is hardly producing the type of news that will comfort short or long-term investors. Between product function pivoting and losing key teammates, uncertainty still looms over the future, long-term success of the social network superstar.

Just last week, news dropped that the company would be losing two more major team members on the media and business development side, a sign of the continued unrest that has made Wall Street uneasy since Twitter went public in 2013.

Both Jana Messerschmidt, a six-year Twitter veteran after a stint in business development with Netflix, and Nathan Hubbard, former CEO at Ticketmaster, are on their way out per Recode.

Hubbard is of particular note because of the position on the team that he was brought into play, which was to monetize the product via commerce through partnerships. Hubbard came from Ticketmaster, and one of his first orders of business was to do revenue-share deals to sell tickets to events (among other things) through Twitter’s “Buy” button functionality. The idea that nearly three years later Hubbard is leaving out of the blue, combined with disappointing 2016 revenues, points to the relationship being rather disastrous.

In Hubbard’s own words, when they launched the “Buy” feature he envisioned that “the site will eventually be a place for impulse purchases, giving people access to items or experiences as soon as they want them” (Frier, Bloomberg, 4/20/2015).  Add to that the news that Twitter has shifted internal development focus to other initiatives, and it sure seems like the Buy function hasn’t taken off in the way Twitter, and those hoping for revenues to flourish, had hoped.

"But just a month later, Twitter disbanded the team working on ‘Buy’ buttons, as Recode reported on Thursday, and shifted its focus on commerce to other initiatives. The ‘Buy’ button technology still exists, and retailers can still use Stripe’s new product, Relay, to sell products on Twitter. But the perception that Stripe’s biggest partner no longer considers it a priority doesn’t look good. You could imagine the challenge convincing potential retail partners that they should invest in a program whose biggest platform partner no longer appears to be interested."

This could also be a sign that the development and subsequent launch are both complete, and recurring revenues are consistently (albeit modestly) spinning.   However, it’s still a bad look for a company gaining momentum after the live stream content deal with the NFL this past April. While it remains to be seen if the deal with the NFL will help user growth, it is a deal that should net Twitter millions in advertising revenue, thus, proving the streaming model is a sustainable money maker. Clearly, they think that this revenue opportunity is more important to place their developer resources than e/m-commerce is at the moment.

While Twitter continues to focus their brand on the live event, what the future of their “Buy” functionality is is anyone’s guess.