Turn Your Friend’s Tweet Into a Surprise Gift With #AmazonCart

I am a member of the Collective Bias®  Social Fabric® Community. This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper amplification for Collective Bias.

Are you an Amazon fan?  (Who isn’t, right?)  Well they just rolled out a cool new feature that allows you to shop from Twitter!  If you’ve seen your friends tweeting with the hashtag #AmazonCart, it allows you to add items you see on Twitter to your Amazon shopping cart, without ever leaving Twitter.  The next time you’re logged into Amazon, it will be there waiting for you!  This social media collaboration is the first of its kind (so obviously, I had to check it out – with the help of #CollectiveBias – to see how it worked!)

There are a couple ways you can find cool stuff.  First of all, if you want to see what’s new, what’s hot, or what’s the deal of the day, you can follow @Amazon and reply with #AmazonCart directly to one of their tweets.

Or, if any of your friends tweet cool Amazon items, you can also add those items to your cart too!

You know what that means?  Instant wishlist.  See, I’m not a super impulsive shopper, personally.  I like to think my purchases over, read the reviews, that sort of stuff.  But that’s certainly not the only reason I shop. I love picking up gifts for others, especially surprise or just-because gifts.  So if I read a tweet from one of my friends saying how much they like or want something, I can add it to my cart while it’s fresh in my mind.

For example, I spotted this tweet from one of my best blogger friends, who was checking out #AmazonCart too.  Melanie has triplet boys.  I seriously cannot imagine changing 3x the diapers I do now!!

So I tested out how it worked by replying to her tweet with the #AmazonCart hashtag.  It will work for any tweet with an Amazon product link attached.  @MyAmazon will tweet you back with a link to either set up your account for the first time, or with a link directly to your Amazon Cart if you’re all signed up.

It does not make an instant purchase, so you can feel comfortable adding things to your cart while maintaining total control of your account.  This was an important feature to me.  You know, being not-impulsive, haha.  But what it also allowed me to do was make the same quick edits to the shipment in my cart that I’ve always been able to do – and send the box of size 4’s right to Melanie’s front door.

You can also make other changes to the item when it’s in your cart like changing the quantity, color, or size.  You can even add extra items onto your shipment (like wipes!)

But back to what I love about the #AmazonCart feature – had I not seen Melanie’s tweet, I would never have had the idea to send something that I know will be useful to her family.  And yeah, a diaper gift is not the most exciting thing for a friend to send a friend, but if I’m able to do anything at all to help from several states away, I like to think even a practical gift is something she will appreciate!  And since she tweeted about it, I know I’ll get the right brand and size.

You can share your own favorite links on Twitter too, whether it’s things on your wishlist, something new and amazing, or if you want to get excited about a purchase you just made!

If you’d like to see more about how it works, you can check out this quick #AmazonCart video that will walk you through it, you can try it for yourself, or you can feel free to leave a comment with any questions you have about it!  I’m not a pro by any means, but I learned a lot shopping on Twitter since they rolled the feature out.  It’s so easy to make someone’s day with a surprise gift!

If I’m being honest – with all the things I’ve got on my mind on a daily basis, I’ve had the intention of doing something special for someone lots of times, and just forgotten later.  Having a gift waiting in my Amazon cart is a great reminder of what it was that I wanted to do for someone.  I’m glad it was so easy to follow through!