Here are our top five tweets from the week that was. Keep tweeting, and we may feature you next Friday.
@adrouart: I wonder if shld assume same rateofchange as past Pymnts developments? Great post: Emerging Payments Goes To DC @PYMNTS ow.ly/fOcdT
A fair point raised here by Albert, who comments on this piece by MPD CEO Karen Webster, who was invited last week to keynote a private meeting on the role of government in emerging payments in Washington. Webster’s take on cash and its continued relevance is especially interesting, and is worth checking out if you have the time.
@rajesh_v: State of US banking @pymnts 80% would consider a mortgage from a nonbank (30% prefer Walmert, 48% prefer Paypal) j.mp/VjioPY
Thank you to Rajesh for highlighting this Carlisle * Gallagher Consulting Group study that revealed some surprising stats about the willingness of consumers to accept alternative mortgages. According to the results, 80 percent of consumers would consider a mortgage from a non-bank, with nearly half of respondents indicating they’d consider one from PayPal. People cited high interest rates, slow process and untrustworthy advice as motivating factors.
@BuchananPR: Citigroup draws fire for “classically bad” news release announcing mass layoffs: bit.ly/REmJAt #PR
Citigroup has received a ton of heat for their press release in which they announce the termination of 11,000 jobs, which was written with a lack of human compassion rarely seen outside of a collection notice or eviction letter. Classifying the layoffs as “repositioning acts,” the release doesn’t even mention the job losses until the third paragraph, and includes a robotic quote from CEO Michael Corbat. Citigroup also announced it’s taking a $1 billion pretax charge, so it was a solid week for them overall.
@jswartz: Buy 230 pages w/ 3 characters & a click. The future book-buying is here, brought to you by @davidwolman & @chirpify. bit.ly/UFDl4G
We interviewed Chirpify on the site back in October, and now we’re pleased to see their making moves. David Wolman is selling his book The End Of Money using Chiprify’s in-stream commerce, and we’re anxious to see the results. Chirpify tells us this is the first time anyone has sold an e-book in-stream on Twitter, so it’s a significant step forward for social commerce.
@DigitalTrends: Facebook and Zynga decide to see other people bit.ly/TxVTs2
This is just one of ten thousand puns the payments industry unleashed on the world this week as Zynga and Facebook altered the terms of their agreement. There have been an abundance of “it’s complicated” jokes, plenty of “Facebook sells the farm” references and enough “we only like you” mentions to fill up a twitter feed. If you decide to poke around for some more, let us know if you find any other good ones.
Have a good weekend, and happy tweeting!