BEV – the tweet-operated vending machine

South African beverage company BOS Ice Tea has introduced BEV, a vending machine operated by tweets, not cash.

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To receive a free sample of BOS Ice Tea, users standing in front of the device simply tweet to the company using a specific hashtag. BEV has built-in safeguards that only pay attention to those sending tweets in the immediate area of the machine.

BEV looks at the location data of the tweet and compares it to a predetermined boundary set by BOS, so anyone too far from the machine cannot activate BEV by simply adding the hashtag to their tweet. The Twitter user also has to add location data from their mobile device to the tweet.

The first and so far only BEV machine is located in Cape Town's Wembley Square.

Source: Digital Trends

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