Fast Talk

In a post on the Silicon Alley Insider, Nate Westheimer says that "Twitter should take full advantage of their messaging platform, user base and user disposition to lead in the P2P mobile payments space, where, despite years of hype, no one has much of a head start." Although a really cool, innovative idea, Twitter has a long way to go before it can actually implement something like this. For one thing, the site is really unstable. And as Dan Glass points out, there are difficulties in ensuring that the person sending the money is in fact authorized to do so. Is using Twitter instead of PayPal even really worth the hassle? The good thing about Twitter is that it already has a strong user base, one that is growing rapidly. The only way though, that it would be able to rival PayPal is if it could make the system as (or ideally) more convenient and user friendly.

Maybe when Twitter stops crashing all the time. Imagine how frustrating it will be to try to send money or receive payment messages when the site has gone down. Will your order resend automatically when the site comes back online? Do you have to wait and do it again yourself? Imagine how terrible it would be for them if orders were screwed up while the site was down. It's not worth the risk...

I think that Paypal will never have its own mobile payment system that will dominate the market. Its much more likely that people will use their paypal accounts to coordinate payments across Twitter, and the myriad of other mobile communications applications that will become popular over time. Who wants to link their financial information with every iPhone/Android app that could use payment tools within the social environment that the app creates? Its easier and safer to stick with Paypal.

Does anyone know of a blog that discusses electronic medical records and their implementation?