Social Commerce For Retail Marketers: Focus on X (Twitter)

Elon Musk officially acquired Twitter on October 27, 2022. What followed were some of the most chaotic and scrutinized months in the platform’s history. Leadership changes, brand safety debates, and policy reversals all hit headlines fast. Many marketers quietly wondered: is this a platform we can still bet on?

That’s not what this piece is about.

The political and cultural questions surrounding X are real, but they’re for individual brands to wrestle with. This post looks at something different: the commerce infrastructure that’s being quietly rebuilt beneath all the noise.

Because while the spotlight was fixed on moderation policies and account reinstatements, a different story started unfolding. One about product catalogs. Payments licenses. Wallet integrations. Even one-click purchases via DM.

For marketers focused on commerce outcomes, this isn’t about defending a platform. It’s about understanding what’s actually being built—and whether it’s unlocking a new kind of full-funnel value.

If you’re still thinking of X/Twitter as a feed for takes, not transactions, here’s what’s changed.

Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app. That was Elon Musk’s vision from day one, and beneath all the chaos, the platform’s trajectory has largely followed that north star. At one point, he even called X’s goal to become the “most valuable financial institution in the world”—a statement that, for all its ambition, feels more grounded with each product update and licensing milestone.

Why does X’s real-time behavior matter for commerce?

Real-time conversation drives intent. X captures the “what’s happening now” moment—where launch hype, trends, and FOMO create pre-purchase energy that brands can harness.
Short paths win on X. When discovery and consideration happen in-feed, shoppable features reduce clicks and shorten the route to conversion.
Marketers should map to moments. Plan around drops, cultural spikes, and live events to align media, product availability, and retargeting.

X is still where the internet goes to talk about what’s happening. Not what happened. Not what might happen. What’s happening right now and what people are thinking about it.

That makes it a different kind of social platform. It’s not a lean-back feed of aspirational images. It’s a live pulse of opinion, culture, news, and trends. And that positioning is incredibly commerce-relevant.

Why? Because many buying decisions don’t come from a polished product image—they come from buzz. From launch hype. From reactions, retweets, and that split-second moment of FOMO when a drop hits.

This is X’s unique value: it owns the moment before intent is fully formed. The moment of influence. And if the commerce tools can meet users there—right as they’re discovering, debating, and reacting—it becomes possible to shorten the path to purchase in a way other platforms can’t.

X has a potential ad reach of approximately 586 million users globally. According to We Are Social’s 2024 Global Statshot, X’s reported ad reach shifts highlight the need to plan around real-time engagement rather than static audience estimates. That’s what makes X worth watching.

How do X’s shopping features move users from curiosity to conversion?

Native shopping reduces friction. Profile Shops, Product Drops, and livestream pilots nudge users from buzz to browse without leaving the feed.
Reminders create ready buyers. “Remind Me” Product Drops build intent and notify fans at launch to concentrate demand.
Catalogue sync powers scale. Catalog integrations and prospective native checkout keep the journey tight and measurable.

X has quietly rebuilt its shopping foundation with tools that nudge users from curiosity to conversion without asking them to leave the conversation. Profile Shops let brands showcase full product catalogs directly on their X profiles, syncing automatically via Shopify integration. Shoppers can browse up to 50 products without leaving the app.

There’s also Product Drops—designed for the hype cycle. Brands can post a teaser, users can tap “Remind Me,” and X will notify them right before the launch. No chasing links, no email signups. It’s simple and native.

“When a brand you love is launching something, you want to be first in line to grab that hot new thing before it’s gone. Product Drops is designed with this in mind,” explained Product Manager Justin Hoang. “Shoppers can get details about the product on the Product Details Page, set a reminder so they don’t miss the drop and they can see what other shoppers are saying — all without leaving Twitter.”

Livestream shopping has also been piloted. In one test with Walmart, viewers could watch a live show, post about it, and buy featured products—all in one scroll. While these events aren’t yet widespread, they hint at how X might use real-time formats like Spaces or video to support impulse-friendly buying moments.

According to Shopify, merchants using X saw social orders quadruple. That’s not just lift—it’s signal. When shopping tools are built to serve the energy already on the platform, behavior follows.

And while X hasn’t rolled out native checkout yet, signs are pointing that way. Elon’s team has reportedly explored one-click purchases via DM and has met with commerce software firms to make it real. If this happens, the entire shopping journey—from product discovery to payment—could happen without ever leaving the app.

Which ad capabilities on X support lower-funnel outcomes?

Performance formats are in place. Collection Ads and Dynamic Product Ads connect creative to product feeds for relevance at speed.
Measurement closes the loop. Pixel and Conversion API support purchase tracking for optimization beyond engagement.
Align creative to scroll speed. Fast, visual units win attention while intent is still warm.

Back in the Twitter days, advertisers had a limited but functional set of tools to drive commerce—mostly centered around basic image and video ads, with some early experiments in carousels and app install formats. Many of those are still available and still effective. But over the past year, X has leaned harder into performance marketing—launching formats and features designed to do more than drive impressions.

For example, Collection Ads let brands showcase multiple products in a swipeable carousel, each with its own link. Dynamic Product Ads, launched in late 2022, personalize which products are shown based on past behavior. If a user browses a product on a brand’s site, they might see it again in their feed along with similar items automatically pulled from a synced catalog.

These formats work because they fit Twitter’s attention span. They’re fast. They’re visual. And they meet users with relevant options while the intent is still warm.

To power it all, X advertisers use the Twitter Pixel or the newer Conversion API. Together, these tools let brands track what happens after someone clicks—measuring purchases, not just engagements. Skai’s paid social platform centralizes social campaign management and measurement across publishers, helping teams apply audience, budget, and creative learnings from X to other channels.

And the goal is clear. According to ad product updates, this push isn’t just about building ad products—it’s about proving ROI. With native catalogs, retargeting, and smart optimization now in place, X is finally taking the lower funnel seriously.

How do creators accelerate X-native commerce?

Creators turn attention into action. Subscriptions, ticketed Spaces, tips, and revenue sharing convert fandom into transactions.
Payments infrastructure is emerging. With Visa Direct/Stripe rails and X Wallet groundwork, creator payouts and in-app value exchange are accelerating.
Brands should co-create with moments. Pair product drops with creator content and live formats to compress time to purchase.

X has made it clear: creators are a key part of its commerce roadmap. And not just in the promotional sense. The platform is actively building ways for creators to earn from their followings—both through content and, increasingly, through transactions.

Ticketed Spaces and Subscriptions (formerly Super Follows) were early signs of this shift. Hosts can charge for access to live audio or premium tweets, with payouts managed by Stripe. It’s not just content—it’s commerce, layered onto conversation.

Tips and in-app payments have followed, including experiments with crypto via Strike and Bitcoin Lightning. And under the hood, X has been laying groundwork for something more scalable: a native rewards system that would let fans buy coins and tip creators, turning engagement into direct income.

X paid out more than $5 million to eligible users in the first month of its revenue-sharing program. While some of these features are still in early rollout or testing, the intent is clear. X doesn’t want creators to have to link out to monetize. It wants them earning in-platform.

And with payments infrastructure like X Wallet and Visa Direct coming online, those earnings could soon flow faster and farther. For creators who already build their brand inside the timeline, that shift matters.

Where is X heading—and what should marketers prepare for?

Expect tighter checkout. Explorations of one-click purchases via DM and additional commerce partners point to fewer redirects.
Plan for signal-first strategy. X aims to own the influence window between spark and action—optimize for that middle, not just the endpoints.
Automate across surges. Use rules, pacing, and creative swaps aligned to events, live shows, and trending conversations.

What X is building doesn’t look like traditional commerce or trying to recreate an ecomm storefront or mimic a closed-loop shopping tab.

Instead, it’s stitching commerce into the behaviors that already work: conversation, fandom, influence, immediacy. It doesn’t seek to own the entire funnel. Instead, it aims to take control of the most volatile and valuable segment—the space between spark and action.

Payments, partnerships, shoppable content, creator monetization—it’s all moving toward one thing: keeping the transaction closer to where the attention lives.

It might not be clean. It might not be for everyone. But if you’re a marketer thinking in full-funnel terms, it’s getting harder to ignore.

X isn’t just rebuilding. It’s re-architecting what commerce can look like when you start from signal—not shelf. Skai’s Celeste AI helps teams forecast, automate, and scale social optimizations when conversation-driven demand spikes.

The takeaway: commerce built for attention, not just action ➜ What’s the bottom line for retail marketers?

Treat X as a moment engine. Use native shopping features and performance formats to meet intent in the feed.
Measure beyond engagement. Optimize to revenue, NTB, and incrementality with cross-channel visibility.
Build playbooks around events. Drops, launches, and cultural moments are your media calendar—design creative, budgets, and inventory around them.

X might not be the first platform marketers think of when planning shoppable media. But it’s becoming harder to ignore.

From profile shops to product drops to creator-led monetization, X is assembling the pieces of a new kind of commerce stack—one that sits closer to influence than to checkout. It’s not trying to replace your ecomm site. It’s trying to make every moment between discovery and purchase more frictionless, more native, and more connected to real-time behavior.

For marketers building full-funnel strategies, this is the signal to watch. X isn’t just chasing conversions. It’s building around the kinds of attention that lead to them.