Now that I’ve relaxed and decided to embrace the idea of apps in tweets, the possibilities are amazing. What it all comes down to is ecommerce from within a tweet. That is the game changer. Right now tweets are only a pointer, not a destination. I can tell someone about a great restaurant, or book, or hotel, but then they have to click on the link inside the tweet to take action. What if I could tweet about a book I just read, and include an Amazon order form for that book within the tweet? Think that would increase the sales rate?
Now multiply that by every form of ecommerce, and realize that all of these application areas are open for commercial exploitation with tweets: hotel reservations, movie and concert tickets, music downloads, clothing purchases, stock trading. Basically the entire ecommerce field will get reinvented. Some current leaders will keep winning, like Amazon, but there will be many more new first movers in this space.
Yes, there are all kinds of issues about trust and security, but those exist on the web already. I remember when everyone was afraid to give their credit card to a website. Things are scary until they aren’t. Once they’re not, nobody worries about it. Anyone remember when microwaves were scary? Getting used to buying something from within a tweet will take a few months at the most.
Keep in mind that Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s chairman, also runs the payment service Square. What an interesting possibility for an acquisition by Twitter. At the very least, he is well aware of the internal issues of online payments.
Right now everyone is looking at Twitter’s attempts to tighten their control over tweets as an advertising play. That may be what they’re thinking about, but as an entrepreneur and Twitter API developer, I’m thinking about all the money to be made within tweets.
