You can send Starbucks coffees to your friends over Twitter now

You can send Starbucks coffees to your friends over Twitter now

You can send Starbucks coffees to your friends over Twitter now

As of yesterday, Canadian social-media users can send more than just sparkling witticisms and insensitive ideological tirades over Twitter. Tweet-a-Coffee, a new Starbucks marketing ploy, lets users do exactly what the name suggests: send redeemable Starbucks e-gift cards through their Twitter accounts.

Those interested in bestowing random coffee vouchers upon friends and strangers can sign up on the Starbucks website. Once an account is registered for coffee-tweeting, users need only type @tweetacoffee into any 140-character missive, along with the intended recipient’s Twitter handle, to perform an instantaneous act of cyber-generosity.

As for potential beneficiaries, Starbucks recommends targeting “your yoga teacher,” “your dog walker” or “someone you’ve never met”—which are all great ideas (as are less stalkery options). We can also see this being a good way of annoying cantankerous coffee-shop owners and hardcore anti-globalization activists—although, at five bucks a tweet, the thrill may not be worthwhile.