Amazon turns to Twitter to build shopper wishlists

The e-commerce company takes another step toward enabling consumers to buy products through tweets.

Amazon shoppers can now add products to their wishlists with a single tweet.

The e-commerce company's second shopping hashtag, #AmazonWishlist, which launched Wednesday, builds on its nascent social-media shopping efforts. This type of marketing is on the rise, offering retailers another way to attract customers.

The new hashtag is connected to the site's popular wishlist-making tool. To use the hashtag, Amazon shoppers must connect their Amazon accounts to their Twitter accounts and reply with #AmazonWishlist to tweets with Amazon product links. The item is then added to a wishlist and the shopper receives a reply tweet from the company's @MyAmazon account and an email.

One in three Amazon customers added items to wishlists last year, the company noted.

Amazon waxed poetic about a seemingly mundane marketing technique. 'Twitter offers Amazon customers a great environment for inspiration and discovery,' John Yurcisin, Amazon's director of social, said in a statement.

The company also rolled out a 'save-a-photo' feature for wishlists on Wednesday, allowing customers to take a photo and add it to a wishlist.

In addition to the more common use of social media to communicate with customers and promote products, Amazon created the ability to add items to shopping carts through tweets with an #AmazonCart hashtag earlier this year.

Amazon has yet to go as far as allowing direct purchases from within Twitter, but that could be just a hashtag away.

Twitter itself has also invested in social shopping. Twitter announced earlier this month that it is testing a 'buy' button option for its mobile advertisers. Facebook is also testing a 'buy' button.