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Pay with a Tweet
The world's first social payment system
The digital age has brought about a new currency system 'Pay with a Tweet'. It's the world's first online payment system where people can buy and sell stuff online without exchanging money, instead payment is made by sharing content from a website to twitter, usually in exchange for something; a book, a ticket or something downloadable.How it works is very simple. A ‘pay with a tweet’ button is added to a website. If someone visits the site and sees the button, they are tempted to click because it will give them something free in return for sharing content.
Sounds enterprising, but it’s not without its glitches. Whilst we’re excited by the idea of a new digital currency, there are lots of opposing opinions about whether the system is ‘authentic or personal’ - the rules set out by Twitter as a guide for its users. Some twitter users have found their timeline is flooded with these types of tweets which although can be customised, follow a fairly standard format which if left unedited become obvious to users, resulting in a reluctance to click on the links.
There are plenty of examples where bloggers and celebrities will post sponsored tweets for brands or companies in exchange for something, and as with all media The Advertising Standards Authority insists it should be clear when a tweet is sponsored. Last year Kelloggs did away with guessing about what is genuine and what is not by opening a ‘Tweet Shop’, a pop-up shop in London where people could buy their new line in crisps and openly pay with clearly sponsored tweets, which included the hashtags; #tweetshop and #spons.
Since then, paying with a tweet has taken on new meaning. Last year, American Express enabled customers to sync their Amex account information with Twitter to pay for certain products by tweeting purchase hashtags, allowing customers to get discount deals. Now the card company has gone a step further by integrating payment into Twitter. Once payments are made, the product is then shipped to the account billing address synced with Twitter, and payment is taken from the synced Amex account.
American Express has created similar card connection systems to work with Facebook, Microsoft's Xbox Live service and the location-based service FourSquare.
We’re fascinated by these trends in ecommerce. Social media networking sites have become the second largest medium of communications on our planet. Over one billion people from around the world have at least one profile on a social media platform and empowerment to the consumer has never been stronger.
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