Twitter announced yesterday that “a small percentage of Twitter users in the U.S. will start seeing the ‘Buy’ button this week, and this percentage will grow as time goes on.”

The idea of combining purchasing with social networking is not unique to Twitter. Several other social networking apps are moving in a similar direction (such as Facebook and Fancy). This is the first time Twitter officially announces its plan to become a social networking/e-commerce engine — but the idea has been in the works for a long time. The company says the goal is to build functionality into Twitter to make shopping from mobile devices convenient, easy, and fun. Needless to say, “Buy” buttons should also increase the number of direct sales, appealing to advertisers and increasing the number of “sponsored tweets.”

For more, check out this article.