Twitter has abruptly pulled the plug on an in-stream payments service, which allowed users to make payments without leaving a tweet, just one hour and 24 minutes after its launch.
Devised by Ribbon the service launched with some fanfare on technology blogs, eliciting a positive reception from tweeters but this was to prove short lived as Twitter moved to unilaterally close the service down.
Ribbon’s Hany Rashwan commented on a blog: “…with no heads up, our integration of Twitter Cards was taken down, and now Ribbon links go back to Ribbon.co without the in-stream buying experience.
“Before we released this, we made sure to validate our Twitter Card implementation and all lights were green. We’ve had discussions with Twitter in the past, and are eager to find a way to work together. This is clearly something that’s good for not only Twitter, but also for Twitter users all over the world.”
Twitter declined to comment when asked for an explanation by The Drum.