Crowd-Powered Delivery System Uses Twitter Users To Ship Packages

So what else is Twitter good for? I am sure there are plenty of people out there who are innovating around Twitter, and the vast database of information that is made available through its API and search engine. Imagine for one second that you are out and about, and you sit on a park bench and order something online. You would then have to wait for your package to be delivered to your home, right? Wrong. With a new crowd-powered system, Twitter becomes the delivery channel.

Eric Horvitz of Microsoft Research in Seattle recently presented an idea involving using Twitter as a primary go-to source for crowd-powered package delivery. The idea is quite neat, and it could become a reality sooner than we all think. The crowd-powered system dubbed TwedEx could have complete strangers delivering your packages to you virtually wherever you are. They will be paid for their help according to how long they are willing to wait for you to reach the destination, or how long they have to travel to deliver it, etc.

The idea is said to shorten the delivery time of packages by quite a lot. By using this system, the average cross country delivery time is said to be around 5 hours. This crowd-powered delivery system uses Twitter users’ frequent routes, and so it could earn you a little bit of money if you’re going near where the package is supposed to be delivered anyway.

With a crowd-powered system like this, even vaccines and medicine could be delivered super fast to locations in developing countries. It’s an intriguing idea for sure, and one that could very well make Twitter a whole lot more appealing to people who want to make a little money off of their time on Twitter. Right now you can make money from sponsored tweets, but that is pretty much it.

The system is so far just an idea (as far as we know), but with Microsoft powering this crowd-powered delivery system, things could go from idea to realization within literally a few weeks. Make sure you start looking at what routes you are traveling each day, because who knows, you might be able to earn a couple of extra bucks by just being on Twitter.