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Twitter Inventor About To Launch His Next Project, Code-named Squirrel

47 points by vaksel 18y ago

tekmanrj 18y ago
Sans-hardware (not supported until 3.0), there are a lot of apps for the iPhone that do credit card processing, including the one that's on Apple TV ad right now: http://innerfence.com http://innerfence.com
- asimone 18y ago
  I have to imagine that Dorsey knows this which makes me wonder if he has something up his sleeve, unless he thinks that his reputation in the business will help carry the project. This is, after all, the tech industry; we shouldn't underestimate the viral.
  - jfarmer 18y ago
    Isn't a credit card app basically B2B? I don't see how a reputation in consumer internet is going to help. I think he has something more up his sleeve.
- oldgregg 18y ago
  As someone who has spent countless hours looking for a good wireless point of sale system this is going to be huge. Small retailers will snap this up and avoid the evil merchant companies. All of the inventory management and reporting lives in the cloud. Right now, besides opentable, all of the POS stuff is either really expensive or garbage. The only comparable thing right now is a Symbol MC70 with Windows Mobile and an external swiper. Apple retail uses them and they are $3k+ a pop. You can get some knock of Pidion 1300s for $1200. All the software is "enterprise" garbage. This device will be given away at cost. Pair it with an ipod touch and small business climb on board in mass. A whole new slew of small business, babysitters, and freelancers will accept credit cards. They cleanup in merchant fees at the very least, and quite possibly create the holy grail of mobile-to-mobile payments -- all nicely integrated into twitter.
  - patio11 18y ago
    freelancers will accept credit cards. Most freelancers I work with (granted: high tech folks, generally) already do. Paypal, how I love you, let me count the ways... Speaking of which: if you want to be extra special nice to your favorite freelancer, pay them through Paypal's batch interface. It reduces the cost to receive the money from essentially 2.9% of the transaction to a flat fee of $1. When you're settling up $2000 invoices, that means a significant amount of money in their pocket rather than Paypal's. All it takes is for you to write a one-line text file and click a button on Paypal. https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_batch-payment-overview-outside https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_batch-payment-ove...
- rdouble 18y ago
  I actually just spent a fair amount of time researching iPhone credit card processing for a client. Innerfence's product is definitely the best of the bunch. However, all of the card processing apps on the app store , including Innerfence's, just talk to the Authorize.net payment system. Another one also supports paypal in addition to authorize.net. As someone who has built both iPhone apps and built apps which use authorize.net for payment processing, I'll say that this isn't trivial, but it certainly isn't a huge challenge if you know what you are doing. Thus, I can't help but think there must be something else to Dorsey's idea.
gahahaha 18y ago
Nothing bad about the Twitter Inventor, but there was (A LOT) of luck involved in the success of Twitter. His next project might be interesting, but it is 99.999% certainly not a new blockbuster like Twitter.
- menloparkbum 18y ago
  but there was (A LOT) of luck involved in the success of Twitter. Actually there wasn't a lot of luck. Twitter is something that users actually wanted: a broadcast "status" update that wasn't just on their instant message client. Twitter is successful because they remained positive and persevered while other people capable of making a similar system didn't do anything about it. Grumpy programmers just posted confused blog posts and forum comments about it. "Twitter? Huh? I don't get it." Nobody really tried to compete with them head on, and they still don't have any real competition. People say facebook is their main competition, and they are right, but Facebook has so much baggage of being something else that isn't Twitter that it seems unlikely people will ever consciously choose between one or the other. More likely people will use both services. It's a bit of luck that anyone cares about posting their status online but it's not really luck that they are using Twitter to do so... What else would they use?
  - c3o 18y ago
    You wouldn't say Pownce tried competing with them head-on?
    - axod 18y ago
      Not afaik. Pownce had features.
  - paulgb 18y ago
    It's easy to pick reasons in after the fact to explain why something happened the way it did. Just being able to find plausible reasons doesn't mean they are right, or that the event wasn't in fact a matter of luck.
  - psranga 18y ago
johns 18y ago
This could be killer if it lets you do person-to-person money transfers like PayPal. If my buddy can pay me back for the movie tickets I bought him earlier with his iPhone and have it go straight to my bank account, I would definitely use it. Obviously there are security and other barriers to overcome but it's not an impossible problem. You don't really need the hardware for this type of thing though.
- vaksel 18y ago
  why wouldn't your buddy just pay you in cash next time he saw you?
  - GeneralMaximus 18y ago
    Your question can be answered by another question: why do we use credit cards? Why not use cash for everything?
    - pj 18y ago
      Answer: Credit cards enable the user to live beyond his or her means and cash does not.
      - FooBarWidget 18y ago
        I only use my credit card as a payment method. Most online shops don't accept anything but credit card, and sometimes I just don't have enough cash with me and don't want to bother walking to the closest ATM. Credit cards allow you to loan money but I think that's ridiculous. I don't want to have a debt every time I buy something, I just want to pay immediately, with the money I already have, not with money that I don't have.
      - jackchristopher 18y ago
        A benefit (of cash) is that it allows anonymity -- excluding the cashier of course.
- whatusername 18y ago
scorpioxy 18y ago
Wasn't this the original idea behind Paypal? Wireless money transfer via PDAs? I remember reading that it was an idea ahead of its time due to the lack of spread of mobile computing. Now that phones are getting smarter, maybe it has a better chance.
sammyo 18y ago
(Just a rant here:-) but won't the next industry changing payment service be true micro-payments?

47 points by vaksel 18y ago

Sans-hardware (not supported until 3.0), there are a lot of apps for the iPhone that do credit card processing, including the one that's on Apple TV ad right now: http://innerfence.com http://innerfence.com

asimone 18y ago
I have to imagine that Dorsey knows this which makes me wonder if he has something up his sleeve, unless he thinks that his reputation in the business will help carry the project. This is, after all, the tech industry; we shouldn't underestimate the viral.
- jfarmer 18y ago
  Isn't a credit card app basically B2B? I don't see how a reputation in consumer internet is going to help. I think he has something more up his sleeve.
oldgregg 18y ago
As someone who has spent countless hours looking for a good wireless point of sale system this is going to be huge. Small retailers will snap this up and avoid the evil merchant companies. All of the inventory management and reporting lives in the cloud. Right now, besides opentable, all of the POS stuff is either really expensive or garbage. The only comparable thing right now is a Symbol MC70 with Windows Mobile and an external swiper. Apple retail uses them and they are $3k+ a pop. You can get some knock of Pidion 1300s for $1200. All the software is "enterprise" garbage. This device will be given away at cost. Pair it with an ipod touch and small business climb on board in mass. A whole new slew of small business, babysitters, and freelancers will accept credit cards. They cleanup in merchant fees at the very least, and quite possibly create the holy grail of mobile-to-mobile payments -- all nicely integrated into twitter.
- patio11 18y ago
  freelancers will accept credit cards. Most freelancers I work with (granted: high tech folks, generally) already do. Paypal, how I love you, let me count the ways... Speaking of which: if you want to be extra special nice to your favorite freelancer, pay them through Paypal's batch interface. It reduces the cost to receive the money from essentially 2.9% of the transaction to a flat fee of $1. When you're settling up $2000 invoices, that means a significant amount of money in their pocket rather than Paypal's. All it takes is for you to write a one-line text file and click a button on Paypal. https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_batch-payment-overview-outside https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_batch-payment-ove...
rdouble 18y ago
I actually just spent a fair amount of time researching iPhone credit card processing for a client. Innerfence's product is definitely the best of the bunch. However, all of the card processing apps on the app store , including Innerfence's, just talk to the Authorize.net payment system. Another one also supports paypal in addition to authorize.net. As someone who has built both iPhone apps and built apps which use authorize.net for payment processing, I'll say that this isn't trivial, but it certainly isn't a huge challenge if you know what you are doing. Thus, I can't help but think there must be something else to Dorsey's idea.

gahahaha 18y ago

Nothing bad about the Twitter Inventor, but there was (A LOT) of luck involved in the success of Twitter. His next project might be interesting, but it is 99.999% certainly not a new blockbuster like Twitter.

menloparkbum 18y ago
but there was (A LOT) of luck involved in the success of Twitter. Actually there wasn't a lot of luck. Twitter is something that users actually wanted: a broadcast "status" update that wasn't just on their instant message client. Twitter is successful because they remained positive and persevered while other people capable of making a similar system didn't do anything about it. Grumpy programmers just posted confused blog posts and forum comments about it. "Twitter? Huh? I don't get it." Nobody really tried to compete with them head on, and they still don't have any real competition. People say facebook is their main competition, and they are right, but Facebook has so much baggage of being something else that isn't Twitter that it seems unlikely people will ever consciously choose between one or the other. More likely people will use both services. It's a bit of luck that anyone cares about posting their status online but it's not really luck that they are using Twitter to do so... What else would they use?
- c3o 18y ago
  You wouldn't say Pownce tried competing with them head-on?
  - axod 18y ago
    Not afaik. Pownce had features.
- paulgb 18y ago
  It's easy to pick reasons in after the fact to explain why something happened the way it did. Just being able to find plausible reasons doesn't mean they are right, or that the event wasn't in fact a matter of luck.
- psranga 18y ago

johns 18y ago

This could be killer if it lets you do person-to-person money transfers like PayPal. If my buddy can pay me back for the movie tickets I bought him earlier with his iPhone and have it go straight to my bank account, I would definitely use it. Obviously there are security and other barriers to overcome but it's not an impossible problem. You don't really need the hardware for this type of thing though.

vaksel 18y ago
why wouldn't your buddy just pay you in cash next time he saw you?
- GeneralMaximus 18y ago
  Your question can be answered by another question: why do we use credit cards? Why not use cash for everything?
  - pj 18y ago
    Answer: Credit cards enable the user to live beyond his or her means and cash does not.
    - FooBarWidget 18y ago
      I only use my credit card as a payment method. Most online shops don't accept anything but credit card, and sometimes I just don't have enough cash with me and don't want to bother walking to the closest ATM. Credit cards allow you to loan money but I think that's ridiculous. I don't want to have a debt every time I buy something, I just want to pay immediately, with the money I already have, not with money that I don't have.
    - jackchristopher 18y ago
      A benefit (of cash) is that it allows anonymity -- excluding the cashier of course.
whatusername 18y ago

scorpioxy 18y ago

Wasn't this the original idea behind Paypal? Wireless money transfer via PDAs? I remember reading that it was an idea ahead of its time due to the lack of spread of mobile computing. Now that phones are getting smarter, maybe it has a better chance.

sammyo 18y ago

(Just a rant here:-) but won't the next industry changing payment service be true micro-payments?