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Comment by metafour | Hacker News Reader

Not sure how credible this is but the article does have a comment from someone saying that the twitter feed said the card had money when in fact it did not. They allude that this is part of the marketing ploy.

Did anyone else experience this?

My guess would be that it's just not updated in real time and they just happened to go at the wrong time. If we're giving the benefit of the doubt...

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I put in $11 on Sunday at a very slow time. I saw the $11 top up shortly after in real time on the @jonathanscard Twitter feed. It was the only tweet for about 10 minutes when my $11 was mostly used up.

My proof! http://twitpic.com/62shre

Then someone contacted me via Twitter to say that they used my credits: https://twitter.com/#!/PinoyxJay/status/100455783979954176

Believe what you want.

I appreciate that you asked in earnest, but the original comment conjures images of "trip-and-fall grifts" and "playing the long con". I usually look at big things like this in terms of where the money's going. But in the context of 'get unwitting customers to show up for free coffee when there's no money on a viral marketing gift card so that they'll spend money anyway', I'd ask 'where's the credit going' -- and no one at Starbucks corporate will claim creating a sleazy confidence game for some career leverage. And I'd also ask Occam for a razor.

You are correct that the Twitter feed isn't quite real-time. It only updates once a minute and the card was getting a lot of activity.

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