Twitter partners Square on political donations service

Campaigns already aggressively use Twitter to spread their message, particularly during live political events such as Wednesday night’s Republican presidential debate.

Candidates can now register with Square to enable links they can tweet to request donations from supporters, Twitter said in a blog post. Instead of simply tweeting about sharp exchange during the debate, the candidate can also can tweet a donation appeal to supporters.

“Twitter has been a profitable avenue of fundraising for campaigns prior to now, and it will make it much more engaging to campaigns as they take a look at learn how to allocate valuable dollars”, stated Vincent Harris, a digital strategist for the Paul marketing campaign.

For political campaigns, the clear advantage is being able to tap into grassroots donations from a large, and potentially new constituency that goes beyond their established fundraising lists and targets.

On Tuesday, the social media behemoth announced a new feature that allows “political donations” to be made in-site.

On mobile, the process is even more streamlined: Tap the Contribute button and it’ll open a donation page within the Twitter app itself.

As of June, 77 percent of Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders’ campaign had been financed by small donations. “That’s why we’re making it easier for Twitter users to actively support candidates and causes”. When the URL is tweeted out, it will automatically include a picture and a “contribute” button. For presidential hopefuls, the advantage of this approach is that donors can retweet their pleas for cash, possibly making their fundraising efforts go viral. Twitter’s head of political sales, Jenna Golden while speaking with Forbes in August said, “We are clearly in a different place right now than we were in 2012”.

Because you didn’t already have enough ways to transfer money online, Twitter now offers the ability to make political donations through tweets.