Amazon has joined forces with Twitter to let consumers tweet products they like into their shopping baskets, as technology companies search for ways to fuse social media and ecommerce.
亚马逊(Amazon)与Twitter开展了合作，允许用户以Twitter消息的形式将喜欢的商品发送到购物篮中。这些高科技企业正在想办法把社交媒体和电子商务融为一体。
The feature is aimed at turning Twitter into a new shopping window for Amazon, which has only dabbled with social media, partly because Jeff Bezos, its chief executive, does not want to share its customers with other companies, according to former employees.
这一功能旨在将Twitter转变成亚马逊新的购物窗口。目前，对于社交媒体亚马逊还只是略有涉及，按照亚马逊前雇员的说法，这部分是因为亚马逊首席执行官杰夫•贝佐斯(Jeff Bezos)不愿意与其他公司分享其客户资料。
Through the tie-up, consumers on Twitter who see a tweet with an Amazon product link will be able to drop it into their Amazon.com basket by replying with the hashtag #amazoncart in the US and #amazonbasket in the UK.
通过这一合作关系，Twitter用户在看到一条带有亚马逊商品链接的Twitter消息后，将可以把该商品直接加入他们在亚马逊网站(Amazon.com)上的购物车中，为此他们如果是在美国，只需要在回复时带上#amazoncart这个标签，如果是在英国这个标签则是#amazonbasket。
Despite the potential for consumers to obtain shopping ideas from friends and experts on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest, social media has so far had only limited success in generating ecommerce transactions.
尽管用户确实存在从Twitter、Facebook以及Pinterest网站上通过亲友及各类专家获取购物信息的可能性，到目前为止社交媒体在催生电子商务交易方面效果十分有限。
Twitter last year hired Nathan Hubbard, former chief executive of Ticketmaster, to work on mobile device commerce projects.
去年，Twitter曾聘请曾任Ticketmaster首席执行官的内森•哈伯德(Nathan Hubbard)从事移动设备电子商务项目的开发。
Although Twitter will not make any money from Amazon sales directly, the group hopes that it will encourage ecommerce sites and other companies to spend more money on advertising through the site.
尽管Twitter并不能从亚马逊的销售中直接获利，该集团希望这么做能鼓励电子商务网站及其他企业加大对Twitter的广告投入。
Twitter’s “cards” – widgets within an individual tweet that are most commonly used to show photos or videos – are already used by online retailers such as eBay to show more information when the user tweets a link to a product. However, consumers still have to click through to the site to make a purchase.
目前，Twitter提供了一种“卡片”工具，这种小工具常用于在个人Twitter消息中显示照片或视频。eBay之类的在线零售商已经开始使用这种“卡片”工具，让用户能在Twitter消息中发送商品链接时显示更多信息。不过，用户仍需要通过点击连至相关网站才能完成购物。
The partnership could contribute to Amazon’s goal of removing friction from the shopping process. In a video on the tie-up, the company exhorts: “No more switching apps, typing passwords, or trying to remember items you saw on Twitter.”
Twitter与亚马逊的这种合作关系将有助于亚马逊实现精简购物流程的目标。在一个有关这次合作的视频中，亚马逊宣传道：“不需要切换到其他应用，不需要输入密码，也不需要记住你在Twitter中看见的商品。”
Sucharita Mulpuru, analyst at Forrester Research, said: “I really don’t think it’s that necessary for [Amazon], because the social networks are best for awareness and they certainly don’t have an awareness problem.”
Forrester Research分析师苏乍利达•墨普鲁(Sucharita Mulpuru)表示：“我确实认为这对（亚马逊）没什么必要，社交网络最适合用来让人知道某个东西的存在，而亚马逊当然不会有这样的问题。”
She noted that when many people were interested in a product they were just as likely to search for it on Amazon as on Google regardless of where they first saw it.
她指出，如果许多人都对某种商品感兴趣，不论他们最初是在哪看到这种商品的，他们在亚马逊网站上搜索该商品的可能性与在谷歌(Google)网站上搜索该商品的可能性一样大。
“The problem is Twitter is really a news and information stream, it’s not really a commerce stream,” Ms Mulpuru said. “The experiments with purchasing that have happened to date on Twitter have not been wildly successful.”
墨普鲁表示：“问题在于Twitter提供的实际上是一种新闻和信息流，并不是一种商务流。迄今为止在Twitter上开展的购物试验都不是太成功。”
The partnership also touches on wider questions about how much of their lives people want to reveal on social media, and whether the willingness to share interests and habits extends to shopping.
这种合作关系还引发了其他问题：人们希望在社交媒体上多大程度地披露自己的生活，他们分享个人爱好及生活习惯的意愿是否会扩展至购物方面。
The Amazon video shows consumers tweeting their desire to buy Procter & Gamble personal products – Pampers nappies and an Oral-B electric toothbrush – as well as a video game for the PlayStation 4 console.
在亚马逊推出的视频中，用户在Twitter上发送了一条消息，表达了想要购买帮宝适(Pampers)尿布以及Oral-B电动牙刷等宝洁(Procter & Gamble)个人用品及一个PS4视频游戏的愿望。
The number of Americans accessing Twitter each month is estimated to rise 11.6 per cent to 48.2m in 2014, according to eMarketer, a research group. In the UK, the number of Twitter users is forecast to increase 13.4 per cent to 13.6m.
根据研究集团eMarketer发布的数据，2014年美国Twitter月访问人数估计会增长11.6%，增至4820万人。在英国，Twitter用户数预计将增长13.4%，增至1360万人。
Amazon itself has nearly 1.1m followers on Twitter.
亚马逊自身在Twitter上拥有将近110万粉丝。
While Amazon has not fully embraced the latest round of social media, analysts point out that the customer book reviews that it pioneered on its website were an early version of the form.
尽管亚马逊并没有完全接纳最新一轮的社交媒体热潮，分析人士指出亚马逊网站上的用户书评其实是一种社交媒体的早期版本。