Why would you rely on a service so capricious, transient and (most troublesome) public as Twitter to handle financial transactions? My experience with the Twitter API is that it's unpredictable and statuses and users can just flit in and out of existence from one moment to the next. That's not something I want to depend on to handle money.

  The investors acquired Twitpay’s assets for $100,000 and
  plan to plow an additional $1 million in product development and marketing.

http://atlanta.bizjournals.com/atlanta/blog/atlantech/2010/0...

Good luck, guys.

edit: that link is to a blog post that isn't behind a pay wall.

I hope Twitpay' new iteration will make available a linkable button like PayPal offers that says, "Sponsor" or "Donate," etc. We have raised money 8 times this year on http://techdrawl.com and used both Twitpay and PayPal. PayPal's catchy Donate button has garnered 9 out of 10 donations (correlation but not necessarily causal), although we we trying to support local southern startup Twitpay!

I also think the opportunity is ripe to create a web app that allows companies that sponsor online events say... podcasts/vlgos to measure effectiveness via tweet mentions as a direct result of that show.

So I'm company x sponsoring show y. Show y says "listeners please tweet out thanking our sponsor company x on twitter" (jason calacanis does this on twist) the web app would sum up the number of people who tweeted and then count the number of followers they have to give you a general idea of the reach and allow for measurement on a per campaign basis.

Of course this could lead to the downfall of twitter which is why it has to be targeted and tasteful.

Please tell me if this sounds crazy or already out there.

"This article is for paid subscribers ONLY".