Book a Flight with a Tweet

Sure, you could make a charitable donation using Twitter. But you couldn’t really buy anything. Until now. Media Bistro’s All Twitter blog tells us about TweetAFlight Lets You Book Flights on Twitter.

TweetAFlight is a site that has solved the problem of how to book a flight on Twitter. TweetAFlight is selling airline tickets, but you can be sure that if this system works, everything plus the kitchen sink will soon be for sale on Twitter.

chirpify
Illustration from Chirpify

Here’s how it works

So simple, so simple. . .

  1. Follow @TweetAFlight on Twitter
  2. When you see a tweet for a flight you want, reply with the word “BUY”.

That reply message to “buy” gets processed by Chirpify. (On Twitter, it’s @Chirpify.) Chirpify is a new Twitter Commerce platform that handles transactions from Twitter through PayPal. Chirpify doesn’t just sell for giant companies like airlines. You can use it yourself to sell items. It can be used for donations. It can be used to buy any item which someone offers you on Twitter. Stand back, because I’m sure you can imagine how this is going to explode.

It doesn’t cost you any extra cash to make a payment for something with Chirpify. It’s like any other payment you make through PayPal. The sellers pay a small percentage – between 2 and 4% to process the sale. Chirpify even works with retweets – an important point for those who might be collecting donations.

Not Just Plane Tickets

As GeekWire points out in Chirpify lands $1.3 million to sell music and concert tickets through Twitter, it isn’t just plane tickets going on sale. According to ChrisTeso, Chirpify started out to be for musicians. From that humble beginning, and with funding of only $1.3 million, I believe something huge this way comes.

The notion of selling anything on Twitter has got to make millions of people’s eyes light up with new money making ideas. It may also make millions of people want to run from Twitter as quickly as possible. Which camp are you in?

[Note: Cross-posted at BlogHer.]

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