Send a cold draft over Twitter with Tweet-a-Beer

Having a round of cold beer is great every now and then—as long as you don’t end up completely hammered on the floor gasping for air, more booze, or the love of she-who-must-no-longer-be-mentioned-round-these-parts-ever-again. And one of the best things about downing a malty brew is sharing every guzzly moment with friends. Too bad not all your friends are a text or a phone call away. Good thing sharing a beer with those distances away takes only a tweet with Web and mobile app Tweet-a-Beer.

Tweet-a-Beer exploded during this year’s SXSW, and does exactly as its name says: lets you use Twitter to quench a buddy’s craving for a cold one. Brewed by Portland-based agencies tenfour and Waggener Edstorm, the service hooks up your Twitter account with your PayPal account for this purpose.

While it sounds like it involves a beer delivery system (which actually sounds awesome, yeah?), it’s more like sending money over the social media for your friends to spend at the bar. Sounds a tad less cool, but beer is beer and getting it for free is awesome just the same.

Tweet-a-Beer uses the Twitter-geared commerce platform Chirpify which you will need to sign up for first. After this, you can easily use its Web or mobile apps to send beer to your friends by tweeting the @username of the beer’s recipient, add a reason for the cold treat, and maybe even add a meeting place (if you actually want to meet up). The recipient will then receive a tweet mention containing the link to a page that details exactly how they can claim the beer money.

Here’s a sample of the tweet, as sent out by @tenfour, sending a hearty five bucks to a Twitter buddy.

Pay @dtwood $5 for a beer on me – You need your vitamins. Totally. bit.ly/GUKcBr via @tweet_a_beer

— tenfour (@tenfouragency) March 27, 2012

And upon clicking on the accompanying link, we are directed to a page that instructs the recipient how to claim the beer-intended cash, and where the sender would like to meet up so the recipient can get his drink. A map is even included to make it easier to find their meeting place.

The $5 will then be transferred to the recipient’s own PayPal account. He can choose to decline, or accept it and instead use it for something else.  A 10-cent fee will also be charged to the recipient to cover Chirpify’s fee, with both agencies receiving 0% revenue. What then would their motivation for doing this? “We made this thing because we’re thirsty.” is the tongue-in-cheek explanation on the Tweet-a-Beer Web site.

A downside is that you’re only allowed to send $5 of beer money per tweet, per person. So if you intend to shell out for an entire round of drinks for lots of people, you’re going to have to a tweet out for every recipient. The upside is beer.