Short version:
This could change everything.
Long version:
Starbucks is not my favorite coffee. But Tuesday I didn't care. When it's 20 degrees out and the snow is coming in sideways, I'll drink burned, week-old coffee as long as it's hot and caffeinated.
I'll take a double, non-fat latte mochachino, light on the foam.
(Not my actual order. I don't know you.)
I swear that the pink-haired girl behind the counter -- who incidentally prefers not to be called "barista" -- looked at me funny. Like out of the scores of customers she serves each day, she's never seen a dude order coffee that way. So feeling slightly emasculated by my beverage choice, I averted my eyes and groped for my wallet with my usual deep sense of shame...
Uh oh. After changing wet pants three times that day in a vain attempt to stay warm and dry (twice wet from snow and once from... well...), I now found myself sans walletus, which is of course Latin for no form of payment.
My thumb was on the panic button. I was about to pretend that someone was trying to steal my car when my friend offered, "I've got that." (Yes, I have a friend.) Not wanting to lose my friend, I assured him that I would repay him promptly.
What about now?
I quipped that just because I ordered that beverage did not mean that I swung that way, and besides he was no Rob Lowe. He admitted that he also finds Rob Lowe strangely appealing but said that he was actually talking about me texting him payment.
I didn't understand.
You're on Twitter, right? Just use your cell phone and text "pay @roblowefan $6 for girly caffeinated beverage" to 40404, and we'll call it even. Remember to go to tipjoy.com and tie in your Twitter account with their service.
Cool.
As I left the coffee haus, an urban outdoorsman -- who incidentally prefers not to be called "vagrant" -- approached me for change, to which I quite truthfully replied that I had none but that if he provided me with a Twitter account name, I would happily tweet the twitt a twenty. To my surprise, he responded with @jonathanhawkes.
pay @jonathanhawkes $1 for entertaining and informative blog post http://bit.ly/2Q6v
Epilogue
Ok, so I made the whole thing up -- which makes the part about the friend especially sad. But what was not fabricated is my excitement about the potential of micropayments, which according to Ivan Kirigin of Tipjoy are "the next small thing."
Micropayments, in brief, are exactly what they sound like: small payments (think a couple of bucks or less). Micropayment services make such miniscule payments feasible. Whereas, if you wanted someone to send you 25 cents on PayPal, not only would it be a major pain for that someone (requiring them to leave your site and go through PayPal's multistep process), PayPal also charges a blanket 30 cent transaction fee in addition to the percentage they take. With a service like Tipjoy, you can gather small donations on your site (or over Twitter), and the user doesn't skip a beat. They don't even have to leave your page!
So why is this so revolutionary? How could this change everything? It has long afflicted me that the world seems to be run by advertising. Take television for example: all your favorite programs are created with the sole intention of capturing your attention so people can try to sell you stuff. Google, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, etc. all have a similar focus. The business model of the digital world seems to be based almost entirely on advertising. And when a business sells advertising, what do you think they are really selling?
Hint: It's you.
Even if you don't object to being bought and sold like so much cattle, let me tell you why the advertising model is not always ideal. Quality. Whereas advertising revenues are generated by playing the numbers (eg. 1:1000 visitors will find the advertisement interesting enough to click on it), opt-in payments rely on the content being valuable enough to the consumer that they will be willing to part with a small sum in exchange for their life being somehow enriched. Quality is now the control factor instead of quantity.
And that makes me happy, because you are now the second person to visit this very high quality blog.
Tipjoy is not the only micropayment service. There is also Tip.It and Twitpay.me. I imagine that there will soon be a dozen others as this is a relatively simple and potentially a very lucrative idea. I also wouldn't count out PayPal jumping on the bandwagon, but that is purely speculation.
I chose Tipjoy for my own personal use. I like its Twitter integration better than the other two, and it is the only service (at the time of this writing) that offers a site widget that will accept donations directly from your web page or blog. It is also well funded and seems to be forming the kind of high-profile relationships that are crucial for a web 2.0 startup's success.
If you would like to give Tipjoy a test run, I would suggest clicking the monkey. He's had a rough go of it and could use your support.
