Have you ever wondered whether you might one day be able to order a cup of coffee straight from your social pages? Starbucks is making it happen. Starting this week, Starbucks will roll out a beta launch of its holiday Twitter campaign, Tweet-a-Coffee, which allows you to treat a friend to a $5 gift card simply by inputting their Twitter handle. 

Here's how it works: if you're already a Starbucks account holder, just log in, sync your account to Twitter and click the green 'Tweet Your eGift' button. From there, you can tweet @tweetacoffee along with the Twitter handle of the person you'd like to buy coffee for. The next time that person logs into Twitter, they'll be greeted with a link to redeem your $5 gift.

From now through November 6th, Starbucks will also reward initial Tweet-a-Coffee users. The first 100,000 people who take advantage of Tweet-a-Coffee by using their Visa card will receive a $5 gift card for themselves when they tweet a gift to someone else. 

Adam Brotman, Starbucks' chief digital officer, recently commented about the company's partnership with Twitter: “I think the two platforms really complement each other.” Brotman also pointed out the attractiveness of Twitter's convenience on mobile: “It does feed into those physical offline/online moments of serendipity.”

For Starbucks, this is a fabulous marketing strategy for several reasons. Not only will the company be able to amplify its Twitter presence, but it's also able to collect valuable user data at the same time. Tweet-a-Coffee senders need to connect their Twitter and Starbucks accounts (with the extra incentive to add their Visa card into the mix), and the recipient of the gift card is actually required to grant Starbucks access to their information to retrieve it.

Taking advantage of the spontaneity of social media by encouraging people to use random acts of digital kindness to treat their friends, colleagues, and aquaintences to coffee may end up being a huge win for the world's largest coffee company.

Have you used Tweet-a-Coffee yet? What did you think? This is the first time Starbucks has launched a beta program to the public, and, according to Brotman, they're still actively seeking feedback on how to improve it.