A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a blog that asked whether mobile payment will stamp out the need for cash. My conclusion fell on the side that it would take over cash and, much to my delight, today’s announcement from Starbucks is evidence that mobile payment really is pushing its way in. The coffee giant has just rolled out a pilot programme in San Francisco and New York for a digital Starbucks card for iPhone and blackberry. The card lets users pay by holding up the 2-D barcode on their smartphone to the scanner at the counter.

The card works much like oyster cards – you can either top it up online manually or you can set an auto-reload that will take money from your account at a scheduled time or when your balance falls below a particular point.

This technology fits in particularly well for Starbuck’s business framework. The company reports that more than 50% of all logons to its free in-store WiFi are made via mobile phone, and that of its smartphone-carrying customer base, 71% have an iPhone or BlackBerry device.

The programme has so far been a success – already 1 in 5 of all in-store transactions are paid for via Starbucks Card (mobile and physical) and more than $ 1billion will have been loaded onto cards by the end of 2010, at the end of the third quarter sales of cards were up 17% and the reload on existing cards was up more than 59% compared to last year.

The goal of this enterprise is for customers to trade in their physical Starbucks card for the digital variety. This saves customers time during payment and Starbucks saves on money.

Maybe we really are seeing a revolution in payment – and all because people like to get their coffee in a timely manner.

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This week has been a very bizarre week for social media, it has been a very clear week for what has been making the headlines and worth reporting about.

1. Twitter news
Twitter could fill the full five this week. Its been a week in which Twitter rolled out promoted tweets. In short they are tweets which are paid by partners. I did predict this around a month ago. 68% of users have suggested they are unhappy with the thought of promoted tweets.
The promoted tweets were rolled out Tuesday the 13th.

The second piece of news was the official launch of the Blackberry Twitter app I haven’t personally used it but many people have made the step from Ubertwitter but did quickly make the step back.
At the @chirp Twitter conference yesterday they did announce they were going to be releasing an official Google Android app.

The last piece of news was Twitter actually made a purchase, Tweetie. Tweetie is the very popular iPhone app and officially renamed last week.

2. Chirp conference aka Twitter developer conference

It is the first conference for Twitter developers, from what I saw over on Justin.tv the Twitter team took the lead from Steve Jobs and presented a very slick presentation.
The best bits from the conference from me has been -
Places of interest – yeah you guessed it Foursquare killer
Twitter archive to make available – basically you can search all the tweets ever published. Think of the best mash ups, they instantly got a lot better
@anywhere – officially announced with features for direct tweeting from external sites (I actually like this idea)
Twitter URL shortener – although not purchased yet this comes as not surprise. Bit.ly have done a good job so far but comes to be expected as stats and reporting is going to be essential.

3. Mexico to ban social networks?
Its been suggested across the net that Mexico are looking to ban social networks Facebook and Twitter in order to stop drug dealing and drugs deals being made by the drug cartels.
Personally speaking it doesn’t make much sense by blocking social networks, not like all of it isn’t recorded.

4. Facebook reject panic button
This story has been surfacing for a while now, it actually comes the UK police when a 17 year old Ashleigh Hall was killed by 33 year old Peter Chapman after he faked his details on the social network. 44 Police chiefs supported the idea but obviously huge development for Facebook and not a huge advert for the biggest social networking site.
Unfortunately I don’t think this would be possible and the amount of potential claims could be huge, although Facebook have said they are working towards a solution.

5. British government leaders debate #leadersdebate
Held last night, live from itv.com, ITV and ITV HD, it had 39 tweets per second throughout the 90 minute program. Everyone knows Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg came out on top of the first debate but just shows how important social media is playing in the race to become British Prime Minister.

If you are keen to keep up to date I have added a Twitter hashtag widget below.
Alternatively you check out the Facebook YouTube Democracy UK site for regular updates or keep up to date with the LinkedIn poll.

If you missed the finishing statements here is a nice little treat from friends at Channel 4.

Danny

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