Twitter Inventor About To Launch His Next Project, Code-named Squirrel • Hacker News Board

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

#11

Post by oldgregg » Sat, May 09, 2009, 3:59 AM UTC

tekmanrj wrote: post #2

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

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.

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

#12

Post by rdouble » Sat, May 09, 2009, 4:13 AM UTC

tekmanrj wrote: post #2

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

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.

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

#13

Post by johns » Sat, May 09, 2009, 4:18 AM UTC

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.

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

#14

Post by volida » Sat, May 09, 2009, 4:50 AM UTC

gahahaha wrote: post #5

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.

i dont see luck being the determining factor for twitter success but yes you also need a bit of fucking luck in start ups although you would call it more like risk taking and Timing. Other than that just get over it.

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

#15

Post by patio11 » Sat, May 09, 2009, 6:02 AM UTC

oldgregg wrote: post #11

tekmanrj wrote: post #2

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

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 an…

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-ove...

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

#16

Post by vaksel » Sat, May 09, 2009, 6:03 AM UTC

johns wrote: post #13

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.

why wouldn't your buddy just pay you in cash next time he saw you?

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

#17

Post by whatusername » Sat, May 09, 2009, 6:31 AM UTC

johns wrote: post #13

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.

Can't he do that from his bank website/app?

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

#18

Post by GeneralMaximus » Sat, May 09, 2009, 6:34 AM UTC

vaksel wrote: post #16

johns wrote: post #13

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.

why wouldn't your buddy just pay you in cash next time he saw you?

Your question can be answered by another question: why do we use credit cards? Why not use cash for everything?

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

#19

Post by GeneralMaximus » Sat, May 09, 2009, 6:42 AM UTC

gahahaha wrote: post #5

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.

I disagree with that.

Before Twitter came along, I would regularly change my IM status to a nice quote, a link to a nice news story or a link to a cool website. Many people do this. Twitter makes it easy to broadcast something like this to hundreds of people, makes it all searchable and encourages conversation. It serves as an outlet for random thoughts and observations that are too insignificant to fit into a blog post. A "stream of consciousness", if you will. Collectively, Twitter is the entire Internet's stream of consciousness.

I find Twitter is a great way for staying in touch, too. Why? Because it simple. Very, very simple.

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

#20

Post by scorpioxy » Sat, May 09, 2009, 8:22 AM UTC

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.