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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.
亞馬遜(Amazon)與Twitter開展了合作，允許用戶以Twitter消息的形式將喜歡的商品發送到購物籃中。這些高科技企業正在想辦法把社交媒體和電子商務融為一體。
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.
這一功能旨在將Twitter轉變成亞馬遜新的購物窗口。目前，對于社交媒體亞馬遜還只是略有涉及，按照亞馬遜前雇員的說法，這部分是因為亞馬遜首席執行官杰夫•貝佐斯(Jeff Bezos)不愿意與其他公司分享其客戶資料。
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.
通過這一合作關系，Twitter用戶在看到一條帶有亞馬遜商品鏈接的Twitter消息后，將可以把該商品直接加入他們在亞馬遜網站(Amazon.com)上的購物車中，為此他們如果是在美國，只需要在回復時帶上#amazoncart這個標簽，如果是在英國這個標簽則是#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.
盡管用戶確實存在從Twitter、Facebook以及Pinterest網站上通過親友及各類專家獲取購物信息的可能性，到目前為止社交媒體在催生電子商務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曾聘請曾任Ticketmaster首席執行官的內森•哈伯德(Nathan Hubbard)從事移動設備電子商務項目的開發。
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.
盡管Twitter并不能從亞馬遜的銷售中直接獲利，該集團希望這么做能鼓勵電子商務網站及其他企業加大對Twitter的廣告投入。
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提供了一種“卡片”工具，這種小工具常用于在個人Twitter消息中顯示照片或視頻。eBay之類的在線零售商已經開始使用這種“卡片”工具，讓用戶能在Twitter消息中發送商品鏈接時顯示更多信息。不過，用戶仍需要通過點擊連至相關網站才能完成購物。
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與亞馬遜的這種合作關系將有助于亞馬遜實現精簡購物流程的目標。在一個有關這次合作的視頻中，亞馬遜宣傳道：“不需要切換到其他應用，不需要輸入密碼，也不需要記住你在Twitter中看見的商品。”
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分析師蘇乍利達•墨普魯(Sucharita Mulpuru)表示：“我確實認為這對（亞馬遜）沒什么必要，社交網絡最適合用來讓人知道某個東西的存在，而亞馬遜當然不會有這樣的問題。”
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，如果許多人都對某種商品感興趣，不論他們最初是在哪看到這種商品的，他們在亞馬遜網站上搜索該商品的可能性與在谷歌(Google)網站上搜索該商品的可能性一樣大。
“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.”
墨普魯表示：“問題在于Twitter提供的實際上是一種新聞和信息流，并不是一種商務流。迄今為止在Twitter上開展的購物試驗都不是太成功。”
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.
這種合作關系還引發了其他問題：人們希望在社交媒體上多大程度地披露自己的生活，他們分享個人愛好及生活習慣的意愿是否會擴展至購物方面。
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.
在亞馬遜推出的視頻中，用戶在Twitter上發送了一條消息，表達了想要購買幫寶適(Pampers)尿布以及Oral-B電動牙刷等寶潔(Procter & Gamble)個人用品及一個PS4視頻游戲的愿望。
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.
根據研究集團eMarketer發布的數據，2014年美國Twitter月訪問人數估計會增長11.6%，增至4820萬人。在英國，Twitter用戶數預計將增長13.4%，增至1360萬人。
Amazon itself has nearly 1.1m followers on Twitter.
亞馬遜自身在Twitter上擁有將近110萬粉絲。
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.
盡管亞馬遜并沒有完全接納最新一輪的社交媒體熱潮，分析人士指出亞馬遜網站上的用戶書評其實是一種社交媒體的早期版本。
