For Twitter and Facebook, the two principal combatants in the world of social media, e-commerce is emerging as the newest battleground. One would think that Amazon's June unveiling of it's Fire phone should be pushing the transition even faster.
Twitter announced on Thursday that it had agreed to acquire CardSpring, a mobile payments infrastructure company that allows merchants to offer deals to consumers that can be loaded onto to their credit cards. When the card is used to pay at the store, the coupon is automatically applied.
For Twitter, the potential uses are obvious: If you see a retailer’s tweet promoting a particular product and want to get the deal, you might soon be able to click a button or send a reply to simply add the discount to a stored credit card — without leaving Twitter’s site or firing up another app. For the last couple of years, T