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Twitter, American Express Letting People Purchase Goods Via Hashtag
Nerval's Lobster writes "What could possibly go wrong with this? American Express has announced a partnership with Twitter, giving customers the ability to sync "eligible cards" with the social network. Tweeting special product hashtags (i.e., #uselessjunk) will purchase a product via that synced card. American Express will then send a purchase-confirmation Tweet, and the usual shipping-and-handling of the product will commence. For Twitter, the partnership also holds significant advantages. If this initial foray succeeds, it could potentially evolve into a workable e-commerce model, and thus a separate stream of revenue for the social network aside from advertising. Also, research has shown that people tend to spend more money when using credit cards as opposed to cash. It's also quite possible that a streamlined online purchase mechanism—think any number of e-commerce Websites' "Buy Now" buttons—could compel potential customers to buy more often and in larger amounts."
Are you telling me that Packard-Bell is back in business?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Seeing how secure Twitter is, what could possibly go wrong?
I'm not sure I understand. How does one browse products via twitter, or if one isn't in twitter, why would one use it rather than the purchase channel of the site they are on?
I tried #blowjobs and nothing happened.
could compel potential customers to buy more often and in larger amounts.
Gee, wasn't spam supposed to do that? Businesses who go after impulse purchases like this are a danger to the foolish and an annoyance to everyone else. A credit card company should not be trying to create economic activity, only to facilitate pre-existing activity or pre-existing needs that are encumbered by technological and social boundaries. This crosses the line into monstrous.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
I need you to clarify, when you tweeted #dell were you interested in buying Dell's new $50 thumbstick computer, or DELL (NASDAQ) for 24.4 billion USD?
- Steve
Just what we need: another quick, mindless way to increase our credit card debt!
I laughed when I read the summary.
Then I read it again and realized it wasn't a joke.
WTF... who the hell thinks this kind of crap up?
That's fine for something like #pear or #iphone4 but what about if you have something more complicated? Some of my purchases would be hard to put into a hashtag:
#IntelCorei53570KQuadCoreProcessorASUSP8Z77VLKZ77MotherboardG-SkillDDR316GBMemorySeagate2TBHDDApexATXMidTowerCaseApex500WPSUSuperCombo
A better model might be able to add a bar on the left, that like WOOT only has a few items each day, and you need to tweet the hashtag it to get the deal.
#creditcardiuseonlyforbuyingdildos
Who decides what the hashtags are? As I'd like to reserve #superbowl, #olympics, #worldcup, #snow, #summer and perhaps #gmaildown for my yet-to-be-invented product.
"Dude, I just bought the new Monkey; it is really cool! #monkey"
(Monkey has been charged to your account.)
"Stupid American Express. I didn't want to buy Monkey again! #monkey #1stworldproblems"
(Monkey has been charged to your account.)
"Damn you American Express!!!!! I do not want a 4th Monkey!!!!!!! #monkey #ihateae"
(Monkey has been charged to your account.)
The G
As anyone who works with the credit card companies knows, AMEX is one of the worst on service charges. They charge 5% of every sale to the seller. Where would the "seperate stream of revenue" come from? Do they expect that as a retailer, I would pay twitter another fee in addition to the fee I have to pay AMEX as well as the fees for my own transaction processor? Twitter and AMEX can team up all they want, but what are they selling? Give me a list of retailers or vendors lining up for this deal.
Expect prices to increase to cover this convenience.
Is see this as being ripe for abuse. The first time this goes live, someone is going to link a hashtag of something innocuous (like #wintercoat) to something expensive, and lots of people won't realize the mistake until they read their monthly bill and see a charge for $2000 on it. I can't imagine the system will last more than a day once people start complaining.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
please answer my question. I have never used Twitter, ever. Don't really feel compelled to, about the only social media I engage in is some FB.
I thought at it's core Twitter was just basically a 140 character text. So is this purchasing concept, essentially sending a text with product/store information to some kind of purchase processing service?
'The unexamined life is not worth living' - Socrates
... and the price of hacked Twitter accounts just went up by 1000. I'm glad I don't use it.
Unless Amex lets you update your shipping address by Tweet, this doesn't really make a hacked Twitter account any more valuable. It's more annoying for you it someone hacks your account and tweets a thousand #BuyPlaxtexTamponsNow tweets using your account, but a hacker in Nigeria probably isn't going to bother sending products to people they don't know. And since a merchant will need to register with Amex, the hacker won't be able to tweet #BuyMyFakeCrapNow to get you to automatically buy whatever fake crap he's trying to sell. Amex will be able to vet merchants.
If this initial foray succeeds, it could potentially evolve into a workable e-commerce model
Sorry, what?
I like the idea of alternatives to the traditional marketplace, but this just seems completely pointless - A solution in need of a problem.
I didn't get up today and say to myself "Gee, Self, I need #bread, if only I didn't need to actually stop at the store I drive past every day to and from work to get some". I didn't fantasize about future Twitter hacks costing me real money. And I sure as hell didn't wish I could annoy all my friends by sending them a message about every single purchase I make (what gives with that, anyway? Every time I buy something online lately, the store asks if I want to tweet it or post it to my FB wall... "Hey, thieves of the world, I just bought an expensive new TV, and tickets to Peru from March 5th through 20th!").
Then again, I don't tweet about the texture of my morning BM, either, so perhaps this "service" just doesn't really target people like me.
First you need to tweet a certain hashtag.
AmexSync then sees this tweet and then replies to your tweet with a second hashtag you must tweet to complete the purchase.
You can either tweet this second tweet to confirm your purchase, or wait 15 minutes and the window closes, and it will require you to go back to step one.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
... #AmEx or #AmericanExpress and drive the whole thing into a deep recursion.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
do RTs count? Now I just need to follow every funny tweet with #SendWill$5 and I'll be rich in no time.
"Heh, look at this idiot: RT Damn you American Express!!!!! I do not want a 4th Monkey!!!!!!! #monkey #ihateae"
(Monkey has been charged to your account)
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
If I ran a retail outfit, I'd be drooling. Think of all the data out there, just waiting to be correlated. As a consumer, this is pretty creepy.
So basically, if I were to for some bizarre reason sign up for this, I would be about the ripest fruit to do damage to. Good thing I don't use Amex, nor would I sign up for this service if I did.
So you outlined a scenario where someone who doesn't use or understand Twitter could run into, then you admit that someone who doesn't use or understand Twitter would never use the service anyway?
I think your ex-wife could think of easier ways to destroy your credit rating than hacking into your little used twitter account (since she presumably has your SSN, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and all of your personal identifying information) Especially since all she'll end up doing is having Amex shutting down your purchase account after their fraud protection filter kicks in, and the fraudulent purchases will be linked to her IP address and/or phone number.
Pun intended. TFA did say the tweet-to-order scheme requires the use of a special "synced" card. So as long as you don't acquire that special card distinct from your primary card, then you're safe.
If this becomes successful and gets deployed beyond this special arrangement, then I see the potential for abuse as a target of crackers and possibly shady commercial interests. Imagine Company X purchasing the hashtag #companyxeatschildren to indicate your interest in purchasing Product X. This would effectively kill the hashtag for critics of Company X. Alternatively, of course, this also opens the possibility for an Anonymous-style DDOS attack of bogus orders.
Perhaps hackers won't be able to direct purchasers to themselves, but this is an absolute massive opening (that's what she said) to allow hackers to ruin someone's life. Imagine a messy divorce, and one of the parties is a vengeful douche. Cue the other party in the divorce suddenly being shipped everything under the sun... most likely things that will get them in trouble, fired, or otherwise ostracized from the community.
Not likely. AmEx is ridiculously reputation sensitive, and wouldn't take on any product that could cause embarrassment. Ever noticed how CCBill doesn't accept AmEx?
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
You're assuming that you will only be able to purchase physical, ship-able things. I'm sure you'll also be able to buy virtual gift cards, WoW subscriptions, cell phone plans, game purchases, iTunes, stocks, etc. With the current (you must give the companies your CC number), only the companies you have done business with can take your money. With the twitter thing, ANY business that does transactions over twitter could potentially take your money (or people use your money to get stuff from them).
Sounds like something Dwolla did a few months ago. Pay your friend just my sending a twitter message.
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/12/12/dwolla-builds-support-for-sending-money-over-twitter-taking-on-chirpify-at-their-own-game/
I made a PHP/MySQL library that prevents SQL injection & makes coding easier!
I assume this will initially be used to facilitate impulsive donations to #favoritecause.
This sounds like a completely idiotic idea purely to separate the gullible and those with poor impulse control from their money. I predict it will be a massive success.