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Buying someone a drink in person is a nice gesture, but buying someone a drink via Twitter is, well, not something you do often.

Online networking app Tweet-A-Beer hopes to change that and make paying for other Twitter users’ drinks more of a habit. The web tool officially rolls out at South by Southwest.

Here’s how it works (flip through the gallery below for a visual tour): Tweet-A-Beer uses Chirpify — an ecommerce platform that lets you buy, sell and donate money — to sync your Twitter account to your PayPal account. You can safely send beer money in $5 allotments.

Oregon-based agencies Waggener Edstrom Worldwide and tenfour brewed the app for public consumption in six weeks, just in time for SXSW where networking is known to stem from quaffing alcoholic beverages.

Use Twitter Handles to Send Beer Money

Networking app Tweet-A-Beer lets you send beer money in $5 allotments via tweets by syncing your Twitter and PayPal accounts.

For example, I sent $5 to Mashable colleague Sarah Kessler.

Click here to view this gallery.

Users have already bought more than 500 beers to incite in-person meetups or wish SXSW attendees good luck. For example, I sent $5 to Mashable colleague Sarah Kessler, who will be at SXSW reporting on all things dealing with startups. I personalized my transaction with a message, which was tweeted to my followers after I hit, “Send Beer Money.” The app also allows you to add your current location and a meeting location to drink beers together.

Pay @sarahfkessler $5 for a beer on me – Enjoy SXSWi! Hope you find the next big startup ? bit.ly/yin0PZ #tweet_a_beer

— Brian A. Hernandez (@BAHjournalist) March 8, 2012

Another Twitter user shows some love for a SXSW-goer:

Pay @mattmcginnis $5 for a beer on me – Since I can’t make it to SXSW, I guess I can buy … bit.ly/z79al1 #tweet_a_beer

— kdagg (@kdagg) March 6, 2012

 

“Given how large the conference is, the best way to track where the hottest spots are and where to meet up face-to-face is via Twitter and location-based services,” Kent Hollenbeck, Waggener Edstrom senior vice president of global corporate communications, told Mashable. “We’re launching it at SXSW Interactive festival — it’s the perfect venue to help foster real-life connections.”

SEE ALSO: 7 Hot Apps to Watch at SXSW | 6 Ways to Up Your Networking Game at SXSW

Waggener Edstrom will also introduce at SXSW a Windows Phone 7 app called News of the Day, which displays a real-time stream of top news and topics as well as trending stories on Twitter. Last year at SXSW, the company launched Hot Spots, an app that showcases popular hangouts in Austin.

More About: Beer, Chirpify, mobile apps, networking, paypal, sxsw, sxsw 2012, trending, Twitter

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Social payments are taking a giant leap forward. PayPal has unveiled a Facebook app that lets you send money to friends.

The app, simply titled Send Money, is just as straightforward as its name. You have the choice to send either an ecard with money or just money with no card. You select a card, choose a friend to send it to and then select how much money to send.

“The PayPal and Facebook infrastructure have now merged,” PayPal’s Anuj Nayar says. “This is another way to personalize the act of giving money.”

While there are several ways to pay with PayPal via Facebook (Payvment comes to mind), this is the first app to enable peer-to-peer payments via Facebook and PayPal. And because it’s a peer-to-peer transaction, there is no transaction fee, though PayPal’s regular limits and international fees still apply.

“Sending money, person to person, is free,” PayPal Senior Product Marketing Manager JB Coutinho said. “If it’s funded by a PayPal balance or linked to a bank account, it’s free.”

And while the primary aspect of the Send Money app is its enablement of transactions across the world’s largest social network, the ecard aspect is being emphasized as well. PayPal was quick to point out that more than 500 million ecards are sent every year, and that’s why PayPal is offering dozens of choices for everything from birthdays to congratulations.

We can see the app really taking off. Users who see on Facebook that it’s a friend’s birthday can quickly fire up the app and send a card and some cash within a few minutes. The app is just as useful for things like lottery pools and reimbursing friends for lunch. It’s a big step toward making social payments a reality.

If you want to learn more about the PayPal Send Money Facebook App, we’ve created a simple walkthrough of the payment process. Check it out in the gallery below, and let us know what you think of the app in the comments.

The PayPal Send Money Facebook App

The Facebook app lets you send money and/or ecards to friends.

Click here to view this gallery.

More About: Facebook, paypal, Top Stories, trending

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Auction giant eBay and Facebook are quietly forging stronger ties with a secret joint partnership and the addition of Facebook exec Katie Mitic to eBay’s board of directors.

Mitic, the current director of platform and mobile marketing at Facebook, will now become the twelfth member of eBay’s board of directors. She will join a board of directors that includes founder Pierre Omidyar, Marc Andreessen (Netscape, Andreesen-Horowitz), Scott Cook (Intuit) and William Ford, Jr. (Ford Motor Company). Mitic was previously an SVP at Palm and a VP at Yahoo.

The appointment comes at an interesting time for eBay. In less than two weeks, the company will host its X.commerce Innovate Conference, an event where the company will unveil its vision for the future of ecommerce under the PayPal, eBay, Magento and GSI Commerce brands. Katie Mitic is already slated to be one of the conference’s keynote speakers. Both companies are expected to make a joint announcement at the conference.

We expect the announcement to be related to the Facebook Platform and the new Facebook Open Graph. Our bet is that Facebook Credits will be given the spotlight in a joint effort between the two companies. We’re digging to find out more about the partnership.

Mitic is a whiz when it comes to mobile. She helped launch the Palm Pre and the company’s app store before it was snatched up by HP. Her background in building and promoting developer platforms, especially in the mobile arena, should prove useful as eBay strives to replace the wallet with the phone by 2015.

More About: ebay, Facebook, paypal

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PayPal has lifted its ban on the account of Courage to Resist, an organization that has raised a substantial portion of the funds needed for the legal defense of Bradley Manning, the 23-year-old former U.S. army private accused of leaking classified U.S. information to WikiLeaks in 2010.

In a blog post, PayPal declared that the original suspension had nothing to do with the organization’s support of Bradley Manning. Rather, the account had been suspended because it had failed to comply with a stated policy that requires non-profits to link a bank account to their PayPal account.

“Upon review, and as part of our normal business procedures, we have decided to lift the temporary restriction placed on their account because we have sufficient information to meet our statutory ‘Know Your Customer’ obligations. The Courage to Resist PayPal account is now fully operational,” Anuj Nayar, PayPal’s director of communications, wrote.

The explanation was posted in response to a widely circulated blog post on the Bradley Manning Support Network’s website Thursday, which accused the payment service of suspending the account because of its fundraising efforts on Manning’s behalf.

Manning has been held in solitary confinement in Quantico, Virginia, since June 2010, and is not expected to face court martial until October 2011. His legal defense is estimated to cost more than $100,000.

The ban on WikiLeaks’s PayPal account remains in place.

Image courtesy of Wired

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Update (8:19 p.m. ET): PayPal has lifted its ban on the Courage to Resist account, and insists that the original suspension had nothing to do with its support of Bradley Manning.

PayPal has frozen the account of Courage to Resist, an organization that has raised a substantial portion of the funds needed for the legal defense of Bradley Manning, the 23-year-old former U.S. army private accused of leaking classified U.S. information to WikiLeaks in 2010.

The account, which has been active since 2006, experienced no issues until supporters were encouraged to donate to Manning’s cause via PayPal, says a blog post on the Bradley Manning Support Network. The network has collaborated with Courage to Resist to raise funds on the behalf of Manning’s defense and public-awareness efforts.

In late 2010, PayPal, Mastercard and Visa shut down payment services to WikiLeaks. Jeff Paterson, project director for Courage to Resist and steering committee member of the Support Network, said he began receiving calls from executives at PayPal shortly thereafter about the website’s content, how the organization intended to use the funds raised for Manning and recent purchases made with PayPal.

“We’ve been in discussions with PayPal for weeks, and by their own admission there’s no legal obligation for them to close down our account,” said Loraine Reitman of the Support Network. “This was an internal policy decision by PayPal.”

According to Jeff Paterson, project director for Courage to Resist and steering committee member of the Support Network, PayPal says it will not release its hold on the account unless Courage to Resist authorizes PayPal to withdraw funds from its checking account by default, a degree of access the company does not feel comfortable granting to PayPal. “They opted to apply an exceptional hurdle for us to clear in order to continue as a customer,” Paterson said, despite having “clearly provided the legally required information and verification.”

The Support Network was refused official documentation from PayPal detailing the policies that necessitated the freeze, the organization said.

Manning has been held in solitary confinement in Quantico, Virginia, since June 2010. He is not expected to face court martial until October 2011. His legal defense is estimated to cost more than $100,000.

Image courtesy of Wired

More About: bradley manning, bradley manning support network, courage to resist, paypal, wikileaks

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