Editor's Note: Has Real Social Commerce Finally Arrived?

Despite all the buzz around social media over the past several years, the concept of "real" social commerce — when consumers can actually buy merchandise directly from whichever social network they're visiting and wherever they happen to be — has eluded the industry. A year ago, for example, investors hailed Facebook commerce, or "f-commerce," as the next big thing, speculating that it had the potential to threaten Amazon.com and PayPal's e-commerce juggernaut. After all, they reasoned, since Facebook is the most visited website in the world, persuading visitors to shop directly on the site would be easy.

It wasn't. Over the past year, retailers such as J.C. Penney, Gap and Nordstom, among others, have opened and closed Facebook stores. Why? Some retailers said their customers had no incentive to shop at their Facebook store over their website. Others decided to focus more broadly on social media, therefore they couldn't devote all their resources just to managing Facebook stores. Whatever the reasons, the concept of shopping on social networks has quieted.

That is until this past February, when a Portland, Ore.-based company called SellSimp.ly rebranded itself to Chirpify and launched a Twitter commerce platform that allows brands and consumers to buy, sell, donate and transact through tweets without leaving Twitter. Chirpify has seen growing traction, thanks in part to a promotional campaign launched in March at SXSW called "Tweet-a-Beer," which used Chirpify's API to allow people to buy each other a pint over Twitter.

The campaign resulted in a huge boost of traffic for the company, with two new users signing up every second — activity that continued for several weeks after SXSW. Although it's slowed down a bit since, the campaign proved that direct commerce over Twitter wasn't only possible, it was so easy a tweet could do it. Chirpify announced last month that it had secured $1.3 million in series A financing from some big names in the business: Voyager Capital, angel investor Geoff Entress, BuddyTV CEO Andy Liu and HootSuite CEO Ryan Holmes all contributed to this first round of financing for the company.

"Twitter is a tremendous platform for brands, retailers, politicians, musicians and others to engage fans, yet with more than 140 million users there's still no way to directly exchange goods and currency," said HootSuite CEO Ryan Holmes. "Chirpify provides a unique approach to fill this void by processing transactions without ever having to leave Twitter." The Oregon Angel Fund also contributed to this first round of financing for Chirpify. Some big brands like HP and PowerBar are betting on it too. They've started using Chirpify to sell directly to their Twitter followers.

Here's how it works: A retailer tweets about a new product and asks its followers to purchase by replying with the word 'buy' in their tweets. If a consumer wants to buy the merchandise and already has a Chirpify account, the money gets automatically deducted from their account. If they don't have an account, they're prompted to set one up along with a PayPal account if needed. Transactions are completed through direct messages to the consumer, with the seller sending the goods to the address listed on the user's Chirpify account.

It appears to be such an easy way for retailers to both promote their merchandise to a devoted audience (their followers) and make it easy for them to actually BUY the merchandise being talked about. What do you think about Chirpify? Check it out and let me know!