Buy, sell, donate and transact on Twitter | Hacker News Reader

Buy, sell, donate and transact on Twitter

sellsimp.ly

22 pointsbartjacobs19 comments

Maybe this is just my inner angry nerd speaking, but I don't understand this at all. Why would I want to buy stuff via a public broadcast channel? Plus, you still have to setup your credit card, shipping, etc. So in the initial transaction, you're not buying so much as saying "I'd like to buy this, please send me instructions on how to do so." Wouldn't tweeting a link work better?

Aside from the fact (as others have pointed out) that this has been tried and failed, how is this genuinely useful and not the kind of thing that a social media guru would dream up, but normal people would never use?

Why not a platform to let people buy stuff by posting on their blog? When I post "BUY PRODUCT_NAME", their google alert can pick up the mention and then they can leave a comment on my blog telling me how to setup my billing and shipping info. Amazing!

EDIT: To boil all the above down, what problem is this solving?

> Why would I want to buy stuff via a public broadcast channel?

Well, it would not be the perfect channel to buy sexual toys, for instance, but at least you can know a lot about the seller/buyer with a glimpse at their twitter profile

Ryan, Thanks for the feedback. Appreciate it.

First, you don't need a credit card at all.

Second, after authorizing your account you can buy, sell, donate or direct pay all you want. The initial setup is one step. After that it's frictionless commerce.

Third, you'll want to buy stuff for the same reason you want to buy stuff on any other e-commerce channel. Even more so when Brands will be offering special Twitter only deals.

Finally, it's genuinely useful for so many people. Just ask the food cart owner who is using our Direct Payments to collect payments. Or, the Etsy seller who can now sell their goods on Twitter. Just a few examples of current uses.

To illustrate just one problem it solves: Currently, brands list items in their storefronts. Then they go on Twitter and Tweet about it. Then a customer clicks on a link in the Tweet and is taken off Twitter to their storefront. Then the customer goes through 5 more clicks before a transaction occurs. Sell Simply eliminates all of that. The Tweet is the listing and the checkout and the transaction combined in one. One step frictionless commerce. That's a brand solution. There are others.

Normal people are using it, by the thousands. This will only grow.

This wasn't thought up by a SM guru, but by a hacker like yourself.

Sorry but IMHO, this is the classic "product looking for a problem" example. There are several things I believe make products like this tough to succeed, most important of which is this: for a transaction-based model to work there needs to be buyers and sellers who go to a marketplace to buy or sell. Without this focused ecosystem, its really tough to make it work. I understand that one could argue that sellers can broadcast across all channels (twitter, facebook etc.) and create a buyer ecosystem in a distributed fashion. But I feel it is merely good theory and cannot work at scale in practice (barring few examples of flash sales, deals etc which have short shelf life and apt for viral / social spread).

A good idea would be to have slightly friendlier tweets i.e. instead of 'Buy!' have users say 'I just bought X from @y'. That way it makes sense when someone checks their timeline, instead of a cryptic one-word tweet.

This looks similar to what Tipjoy (ex-YC) tried a couple years ago, before they deadpooled: http://techcrunch.com/2009/04/08/micro-blogging-meets-micro-...

In line with the post that @avichal wrote the other day (http://avichal.wordpress.com/2011/11/14/build-something-peop...): why now?

1-click-payment for anything... Could be a square card-case competitor. Image a café that has tweeted the menu. You go in, reply to what you want, you get it. Could be huge on mobile payments.

Could be... or it could be an overly vague idea that boils down to nothing

I think the "ability" to do this is cool... but I can't imagine that I'd ever feel the need to actually do this.

Novelty, sure, but practical? Not in my mind.

I read the site but I still cannot figure out, if you're a vendor, what is necessary for buyers to activate their account.

You just sign in with Twitter and connect your PayPal account. After that transactions can be made over Twitter.

How will you handle chargebacks? If my Twitter account gets hacked, will I be responsible for the cost or will you be?

PayPal handles all fraud.

The problem for the hacker is that in order to get paid their fake Twitter account would need to be connected to a real PayPal account which is connected to a real bank account. The entire chain of transaction would be very traceable.

If your Twitter account is hacked you are going to immediately realize you are transacting over Twitter. You'd see pay tweets and transaction tweets occurring in real time. You could then easily just shut off your PayPal connection to Twitter in your Sell Simply account. We do not store any Twitter or PayPal login, password or account data at all.

I've been looking for this... pay through twitter. Imagine the possibilities!

Running Lean was a book that you could pay with a tweet: http://www.runningleanhq.com/

Not the same thing. That is the author trading retweets for a book. Sell Simply actually turns Tweets into transactions. You can pay, buy, sell or donate with them.

This is exactly half of my idea previously posted on HN.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2900514

It sounds cool. Then you use it, and it becomes even cooler!

This rules. Incredibly easy.

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