People holding mobile phones
People holding mobile phones are silhouetted against a backdrop projected with the Twitter logo in this illustration picture taken in Warsaw in this September 27, 2013 file photo. Twitter Inc on April 29, 2014, reported 255 million monthly active users, up 5.8 percent from the previous quarter but not enough to satisfy investors increasingly concerned about its struggle to gain a mass following. REUTERS

Popular online retailing company Amazon has joined hands with Twitter to allow users to handle their shopping cart directly from the micro-blogging Web site. Users will be able to add products to the shopping cart by using a specific hashtag in their tweets.

When users find a product link on Twitter by Amazon, they can reply to the tweet with #amazoncart (for U.S.) and #amazonbasket (for UK). The order, nevertheless, will only be confirmed after the user goes to the Amazon web site and pays for the purchase. The retailing company expects to attract more number of customers through this new partnership that will presumably boost their appeal on social media, BBC reported.

According to digital marketing firm LEWIS Pulse, it is "all about conversations that people are having on various platforms such as Twitter and Facebook about what interests them." The Asia-Pac head of the company, Sanjana Chappalli, said that brands were "keen to tap into these platforms, not least because they have hundreds of millions of active users." According to Chappalli, the partnership between Amazon and Twitter "provides them a good chance to leverage on other sites such as Amazon to help push the engagement rates up."

Interestingly, Twitter announced a few days back that it had suffered a net loss of $132 million in the first quarter. Even though the number of active Twitter users became 255 million in the first quarter of 2014, the increase of 5.8 per cent compared to the previous quarter was still less than what the analysts had expected.

It has been speculated that Twitter's heydays may well be over. The pace of growth for the social networking Web site may now slow down. It means that the revenue of the Web site is going to be negatively influenced by the factor. Chappalli said that the collaboration might help Twitter engage its users in a better way. Thus, it will possibly attract more advertisers, she said.