The Twitter shopping search engine, CheapTweet.com, has introduced a program that enables online merchants with Twitter accounts to set up a social presence that focuses on special offers and prices. The search engine's new functionality, called CheapTweet Stores, aggregates tweets from the retailer's Twitter account or accounts into one location on CheapTweet.com as a social shopping resource for shoppers on the web. Twitter messages are called tweets.

Overstock.com Inc. was the first online retailer to set up shop on CheapTweet.com. "The Overstock.com Store from CheapTweet enables us to pull all our Twitter deal postings into one central location and put them in front of the eyes of the many CheapTweet users," said Patrick Byrne, chairman and CEO of Overstock.com Inc. "Social media, including Twitter, is a key initiative for us to interact directly with our customers and share special discounts with our most loyal shoppers. With CheapTweet, we get our deals in front of an established audience of enthusiastic online bargain hunters," he added.

With CheapTweet Stores, online retailers can better manage their multiple Twitter accounts and more effectively communicate with consumers, said Hayes Davis, founder and CEO of Appozite, which is the social ecommerce software company that operates CheapTweet. Davis lists additional benefits, which he says include:

- Consistent corporate branding. A CheapTweet Store is a branded, searchable index hosted on CheapTweet.com. It includes both deal tweets and general tweets from a retailer's multiple Twitter accounts.

- Maximized Twitter presence. A CheapTweet Store complements a retailer's Twitter presence by making it easy for customers to find and act on deals shared on Twitter, even if a user doesn't subscribe to a retailer's Twitter stream or missed the original deal tweet.

- Ability to reach the consumer that is ready to buy. The majority of CheapTweet visitors, according to Davis, are already looking to buy and are simply searching for the best price.

This article was edited from a story on InternetRetailer.com.