Twitter Cuts Commerce Team — And Buy Buttons

Twitter is seeing some important changes to its day-to-day resources.

BuzzFeed reported on Wednesday (May 25) that the social media giant has seen several of its two dozen commerce team professionals leave the company, and now, the remaining staffers are spread between two teams, focused on dynamic product ads and customer service, with the eventuality that the latter might have a commerce function via buy buttons.

But the staffing decline, said the newswire, means that social commerce has seen only “sluggish progress,” with other names in the space pursuing the same model.

In an interview with BuzzFeed, an unnamed source said: “People are not buying on social media right now. They are still buying, for the most part, on mobile Web. There’s still an active ‘Buy Now’ card at Twitter, but no one’s putting any work into it. There’s no new product development happening.”

In the meantime, Twitter is sticking to some of its regular offerings, such as dynamic product ads, which also feature data and analytics on customers. The company has said that click-through rates are better with those types of ads.