Twitter Hires Ex-Ticketmaster CEO Nathan Hubbard As Head of Commerce To Make It Retail Friendly

Twitter has hired ex-Ticketmaster CEO Nathan Hubbard as its new Head of Commerce. Hubbard will work under head of revenue Adam Bain to make the platform more friendly to retailers.

We’ve confirmed the hire with Twitter, which pointed to a tweet this morning by Bain. According to Bloomberg, Hubbard will reportedly focus on the business of encouraging retailers to use Twitter to convert sales from tweets. Using Twitter’s Cards feature to present products in the best way possible and to streamline the purchasing procedures will likely be a part of that purview.

At this point, there’s no indication that this will be about creating a payment component to Twitter cards, something that startups like Chirpify are currently working on.

Hubbard tells Bloomberg that it will be ‘partnering’ with retailers to sell digital and physical goods on the platform, helping them to “use Twitter to sell [them] more effectively”.

Hubbard left Ticketmaster earlier this month, where he was overseeing an overhaul of its online business. “To me, Twitter is a cardiogram of the passion of the live moment, So I’m excited to announce I’ve joined the flock as Head of Commerce,” Hubbard said today in an announcement tweet.

Though Hubbard’s position isn’t reportedly about making Twitter a payments platform yet, it’s not hard to see that the integration of Square into Twitter Cards, along with a universal login system, could create a very powerful sales component without much fuss. Depending on how the efforts of Hubbard improve the retail tweeting experience, we could see the birth of a new sales powerhouse along the lines of Amazon or eBay.