Buh bye Twitter 'buy' button

SAN FRANCISCO — Buh bye Twitter 'buy' button.

The shopping button, that too few tapped to buy stuff from a tweet, will soon be no more. It's the latest casualty as Twitter tries to earn back its Wall Street cred amid growing pressure to reignite user and revenue growth. Twitter says it's focused instead on other commerce products, such as website conversions, which launched in September.

The button's demise is not much of a surprise. It has been one of the walking dead products at Twitter. In May, Twitter said it would stop product development on the buy button. Commerce chief Nathan Hubbard had departed and Twitter disbanded the team that focused on the button. Of course its life-support status was best telegraphed by the ongoing struggles of Twitter to measure up in a social-media universe ruled by gargantuan competitor Facebook and fleet-footed newbies such as Snapchat.

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The Twitter buy button got a eulogy thanks to Shopify customers who began receiving notices that it was being phased out “as a result of the Twitter team pivoting way from their ecommerce focus," according to TechCrunch which was the first to report the buy button's RIP status.

"Nothing new here," Twitter said in an email. Twitter simply isn't "investing in it anymore," it said of the buy button.

Shop while you tweet: Twitter launches 'buy' buttons

The buy button may be going out with a peep but it came in with a splash. Twitter launched the buy button in 2014 amid a tidal wave of interest in prodding mobile users chatting with friends and family on social networks to stop and shop.

Twitter users never really bought into the idea of buying stuff from within a tweet. Brands didn't take to it either. Not that buy buttons elsewhere have had a resounding track record. Facebook killed off its buy button though Pinterest has stuck it out.

According to a survey from Campaigner, 72% of marketers say they had no sales as result of buy buttons in 2016 and 25% fewer marketers are using them now than were a year ago. Four out of 10 marketers say they plan to reduce their use of buy buttons in 2017.