Online retail giant Amazon has announced a tie-up with social networking site Twitter that allows users to add products to a shopping cart by tweeting the hashtag #amazonbasket.

Users need to sync their Amazon and Twitter accounts and still need to go to Amazon to pay and complete the purchase.

The move comes as Twitter announced a net loss of £78m for the first quarter despite the number of active users rising 5.8 per cent to 255m for the three months of 2014.

“Ultimately it is all about conversations that people are having on various platforms such as Twitter and Facebook about what interests them,” said Sanjana Chappalli, Asia-Pac head of LEWIS Pulse, a digital marketing firm told the BBC. “Brands are keen to tap into these platforms, not least because they have hundreds of millions of active users.”

It is another signifier that social media is increasingly being monetised by large firms but the news has split opinion with consumers. More than half said they were not interested in using the service.

Tim Froggett, Senior Lecturer in Marketing at Anglia Ruskin University said the invention was “pointless.”

“Amazon must be responsible for more pointless innovations than any company in history. It‘s a good job long-term investors seem happy, for now, to go along for the ride. It‘s time for profits and a sustainable business model, not more pointless innovation.”

“No more switching apps, typing passwords, or trying to remember items you saw on Twitter,” Amazon said in a video it posted about the tie-up.