Twitter, American Express Letting People Purchase Goods Via Hashtag 106
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."
Before people freak out without RTFA (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Eh (Score:2, Informative)
I agree. This is far from one click. First you tweet hashtag, for example #BuyGiftCard. Then you wait god knows how long to receive confirmation in twitter.com/mentions, then you are supposed to tweet confirmation, for example #ConfirmGiftCard.
Tried the system yesterday to get free cash with my amex cards and fake twitter accounts I use exclusively for these AMEX promotions. They had $25 AMEX giftcards for $15 this time.
Time for confirmation ranged from seconds to hours for 5 transactions I did. This really sucks donkey balls because you are supposed to tweet your confirmation within 15 minutes of buy hashtag confirmation by AMEX.