Twitter as micropayment mechanism

Dec 18, 2008 by Dan Taylor    16 Comments    Posted under: News, Social Media, Technology

Twitter as a way to make micropayments.  Sure there are plenty of microtransaction specialists out there, but lets say I just want a quick and easy way to shoot @datadirt my half of last night’s bar tab?  Sure, I could login to PayPal, enter Ritchie’s address, and he’d have the cash shortly.  But what if we’ve just met up in the office and I feel like a schmuck for not having the $30 on me?  What if I’m nowhere near a computer, but happen to have my iPhone with me?  Well…if Atlanta startup Twitpay gets their way, a simple ‘@datadirt twitpay $30 – inebriation would then have money in Mr. Pettaur’s Twitpay account within 30 minutes.

Twitpay facilitates the transaction by monitoring any and all tweets containing the phrase Twitpay.  Your Twitpay account can be replenished using a simple ‘pay all’ site such as PayPal.  Once a recipient has accumulated more than $10 in their Twitpay account, they can then cash this out in the form of Amazon Gift Cards, with hopefully more options down the road, a Twitpay charity, or Twitpay itself.  Twitpay will take a modest $.05 fee on all transfers over $.99.  Fair enough, you provide a convenient service; I’ll give you a nickel for it.

Settling last night’s bar tab might be one use for Twitpay, but I believe this application to have a number of other uses.  What about paying the bills?  @DIRECTV already has some of the best customer service I’ve ever seen via twitter, how about paying my monthly bill?  A simple @DIRECTV twitpay $125.99, @USGovStudentLoans twitpay $132.48, etc. all on the go with a simple tweet?  Could that be any easier?

How about the applications for free-to-play/microtransaction based video games?  @Battlefield Heroes twitpay $2 AK-47.  @Blizzard twitpay $15 character customization.  No complicated logins, no passwords to remember, just tweet it and pay it.

Better yet, talk about immediate emergency response.  Hurricane Katrina Strikes? California has (yet another) earthquake?  @RedCross twitpay $50.  At this time, $50 is the maximum amount allowed by Twitpay, but that’s not to say you couldn’t retweet the $50 more than once.  Given the rise in NPO interest in micro donations, Twitpay is something that they should ALL be seriously considering.

Twitpay CEO and Co-Founder Michael D. Ivey states, “Ideally we want to enable social giving on Twitter, but beyond that, we could enable charitable giving, such as to the Red Cross. We’re very excited to be able to help people do good over Twitter.”

Still in its infancy, Twitpay was created during the Atlanta Startup Weekend 2, an experiment in entrepreneurship designed to conceive, develop and launch a fully functional company within 54 hours.  Be sure not to miss their FAQ’s for an example on how FAQ’s should be written.

As more and more companies and brands begin to harness the power of social media, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a ‘Pay by Twitpay’ option popping up in more places than you’d expect.

Oh, and if you’re feeling particularly generous (after all, it IS the season of giving), @MountainDan is now accepting bribes gifts.

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Chevys introduces social media widget

Dec 15, 2008 by Dan Taylor    2 Comments    Posted under: Social Media

TexMex restaurant chain Chevys recently launched a widget based holiday flash game that seeks to engage customers and entice them through the door with a special holiday offer.

Working as a Social Media consultant, I spend lots of time talking to company and business owners about what Social Media is, what it can do for their company, and how to use it.  Needless to say, when a major restaurant chain breaks the mold and reaches out to customers in new and innovative ways, well…it just makes me jump for joy.

Thanks to clearspring, the widget is embeddable on any blog, web site, or social networking profile, with the top three traffic drivers winning a party valued at $500.  It features a “Mexican jumping bean” flash based game, Chevys Fresh Mex recipes, a store locator (including local taxi information), Chevys recipes, and holiday gift cards.  When users make a gift card purchase through the Compadre widget they automatically receive a $10 credit towards their next meal with a $50 purchase.

This is really an outstanding example of not only engaging users via social media, but following through on the deal with an added value (the $10 off).  I’ve got to hand it to the folks at Chevys – tossing the local taxi information in there is really quite genius.  By providing this info Chevys is keeping the user actively involved with the widget, rather than sending you out to look for it yourself, thereby further increasing your likelihood to follow through on your initial, hmmm…I’m kinda hungry, where should I have lunch…thought process.  Likewise with the recipes.  Do YOU know how to make Flan?  Me neither – but thanks to Chevys widget, you’re no further than a click away from a recipe even my ‘I have no skills in the kitchen’ brain can follow.  That and they’ve also got you back to home base: the Chevys website, further increasing your likelihood to visit the restaurant in the near future.

And now for the cons.  While I applaud Chevys venture into the Social Media space, given the time and money spent on the development of this widget, it’s almost pointless.  The features are great, but the meat and potatoes of the widget, the actual game, is completely crap.  How long did you bother to keep those beans in the air?  15 seconds?  20?  Right.  Given the runaway success of Tower Defense flash based games, I’m really quite surprised to not see Chevys go down this line.  Perhaps they might have been better off consulting a Social Media Consultant with Video Game Inudstry Experience?

Rosemary Doody, Director of Marketing for Chevys Fresh Mex comments, “It’s no surprise that consumers are actively seeking value and discounts during the holidays and according to a recent social media study, 93% of Americans believe a company should have a presence in social media. This new and exciting medium gives Chevys a great way to engage with our current guests and attract new ones. Chevys has one of the most competitive holiday gift card offers in the industry. We want consumers to be aware of that. Combined with the opportunity for three online users to win a party valued at $500, consumers will find The Compadre widget fun, engaging and a tremendous holiday value.”

Amen Rosemary.  The Chevys Compadre widget arrives just in time to pump it full of holiday gift card value and a great example of large companies engaging in the use of Social Media.  It’s a win-win situation all around.

Friendster nets another social networking patent

Dec 10, 2008 by Dan Taylor    9 Comments    Posted under: News, Social Media, Technology

Some might argue that Friendster is the one that started it all, and if you look at the historical data, they might just be right.  Friendster was the first social networking platform, as we know them today, to really gain any traction and start connecting users.

Due to a series of mistakes and misplays, Friendster quickly found itself in a very distant backseat to then up and comers MySpace and Facebook.  However, don’t write Friendster off quite yet, as they’ve somehow managed a popularity campaign in Asia of all places.  However, Asia isn’t the only place seeing a lot of Friendster these days; so is the U.S. Patent Office.  Friendster has recently received their fourth patent, with another twelve plus applications currently in the works.

Their most recent patent concerns the “compatibility scoring of users in a social network”.  To put that in digestible English: a method for analyzing and determining just how similar social network users are to each other.

Let’s look at that again.

Friendster has been granted a patent on a ‘method’ used to judge the similarity of different users across a social network.  In other words, one of the main mechanisms that’s fundamental to finding and suggesting friends on a social network – Friendster now has a patent on it.  Whoa.

San Francisco based Friendster was granted these patents based on the fact that it was the first social networking site to gain traction in what is a now crowded marketplace.  A bit like the great land grab of the late 19th century (think Tom Cruise and Nichol Kidman – Far and Away), Friendster was first on the spot, and offered a number of features that are now standard operating equipment on social networking sites.  Friendster also currently holds patents on: how people are connected on a social network, the process of friends encouraging each other to upload content, and ways for users to manage social-network friendships.

So what does it all mean?  Sure they’ve technically got the patents, and technically all other social networking sites are in direct violation of these patents be using these technology without forking over a dime for it.  Theoretically, Friendster could step into a court of law and demand that MySpace and Facebook cough up a buck or two every time a user adds a friend.

So far, Friendster hasn’t bothered to flex the patent muscle, but they’re very well within their rights to do so.  Obviously, Friendster isn’t commenting about their future legal strategy.

Facebook Connect goes live

Dec 5, 2008 by Dan Taylor    3 Comments    Posted under: News, Social Media, Technology

Stand back and get ready social web users, Facebook has officially opened the single sign-on technology floodgates.  Facebook’s ‘not-so-under-the-wraps’ Connect feature is now live, and can be implemented by any site via the company’s web developer platform.

Facebook says that 100+ sites have added the technology during the pre-launch testing phase, and/or plan on implementing the tech in the coming weeks.  You may have heard of just a few of them: Digg, Gawker, Vimeo, CNET, and several major universities.

Facebook’s 125 million (gave or take a few…but who’s counting?) users can now participate on any one of these sites by signing in with their Facebook ID.  This Facebook login will then in turn re-broadcast their actions on this site to their friends within Facebook.  Facebook ensures that users will have privacy controls so that only approved info gets the re-broadcast (‘cause I’d hate for my comments on imalumberjackandidontcare.com to be rebroadcast).

Connect will also assist in matching up your Facebook friends on this external site.  I.e. you may not have known that Kaveh Rastegar is also a member of Vimeo, and enjoys indie filmmakers.  Connect will ensure that the two of you also have the options to be friends on Vimeo.  Likewise, if Kaveh posts a comment on a video, and logs in via Connect, his comments will then show up in his news feed for all his friends to see and comment on as well.

However.  Having these open standards does carry a bit of a price tag.  The social data that is collected by using these interacts gets fed back into Facebook.  By utilizing the Connect technology, the site owner agrees to share any data it gathers about users who use Connect with Facebook – and Facebook alone.  Hmmm.  Facebook has found itself in this tub of hot water before (think Beacon Advertising System), is this just another attempt at skirting the issue by having third-party sites collect the data?  Hopefully, I’m way off here.

This technology is nothing new, as OpenID and Open Stack are currently in existence, but have been a bit late to the party, held up by a not-so-hot user experience and security.  OpenID and Open Stack are a set of open source technologies being developed by Google, Yahoo!, MySpace, Plaxo, and other social sites that would allow the end user a larger system of portable data.  Truth be told, I’m a big fan of Facebook, and could easily see them getting this one just right.

And apparently, I’m not the only one.  In a recent press release, Facebook states that,

“two out of three new registrations at participating sites were generated through Facebook Connect during the testing phase.”

66%!  Wow!  And the sticky sweet Facebook goodness doesn’t stop at the registration page.

“users who logged in using Facebook Connect were 50 percent more likely to participate socially on a website than non-Facebook Connect users once logged in.”

Dang!  Those are some mighty big numbers.  While the jury is still out on whether Connect can deliver all that it promises, it’s looking mighty good thus far.  Let’s keep an eye on this one.

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