Monday, February 01, 2010

Twitter To Order: A New Way To Make Business With Twitter

Pizza restaurants like Pizza Hut have recently launched their online ordering service. The idea allows restaurants to be more productive, as they don’t need someone on the phone to get and type in the system the orders. It is directly set into the production line.

But I was wondering if it was possible to get such a system with Twitter. Indeed, instant messaging is becoming more and more popular, and there is no questions that Twitter is one of the leading service. Twitter will also enables people to order on mobile devices (Twitter is used 30% of the time on mobile handheld).

I believe we could send a Tweet like @pizzahut with the name of the product, and then it could be produced. It could also be delivered thanks to the GPS location of the person. Either the IP if speaking about a laptop or a desktop, or the GPS chip if on a cell phone.

Now the challenge would be to set a payment system that would secure the transaction while tweeting. This is a great challenge because Twitter doesn’t have any expertise in this field. But it might actually a great source of revenue, to get commissions out of financial flows over Twitter.

Actually it reminds me of the service of Blippy, that proposes to link your credit card to a twitter like system where you would send a tweet whenever you purchase something. I also know people that have been working for virtualized moneys, which could also be a solution.

Anyways, I think that ordering via Twitter could represent a great opportunity for:
Customers: It would be a fast and easy way to order things from the everyday life
Twitter: It would be a new monetization opportunity for the service
Companies: It would probably creates new possibilities to cut production costs, and maybe trigger more sales by easing the ordering process.

What do you think about it? Do you think it is possible to implement such a service?