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A new model for donations: tip now, pay later (tipjoy.com startup)

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urlwolf:
Here's the source:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/02/10/tipjoy-a-better-tip-jar-for-content/

If you leave a tip as a new user, you start to build up an account debit. You can eventually pay that off via PayPal (TipJoy keeps 2%), although no one comes after you if you choose to skip out on the bill. You can also start to ask for tips on your own site, and anything people leave for you offsets what you’ve given to others.
--- End quote ---

mouser:
tipjoy announced today they were shutting down:

Tipjoy is shutting down.

...

We have decided against continuing to pursue additional funding. After a long and hard look at the market and the situation, we didn't feel it made sense.

When we evaluate why there's been so much hype about payments on Twitter, and yet so little traction for us (and even far less for our competitors) it is clear to us that the reason is that a 3rd party payment service doesn't add enough value. We strongly believe that social payments will work on a social network, provided that they're done within the platform and not as a 3rd party. "Simple, social payments" is *the* philosophy needed to do digital payments right, but once a service groks that, they need only to implement it on their own. We've been the thought leaders in this space, we see the hype and excitement, and yet we know very intimately the difficulties in gaining actual traction. The only way to get around this is for the platforms themselves to control payments - then all people wanting to operate on that platform would have to play along. We believe that a payments system directly and officially integrated into social networks such as Twitter and Facebook will be a huge success.

Thank you to everyone who has supported and helped us along the way.

If you have any questions, get in touch: [email protected]

Thanks,
Ivan & Abby - Team Tipjoy
--- End quote ---

See their blog entry for more: http://tipjoys2cents.blogspot.com/2009/08/so-long-and-thanks-for-all-fish.html

urlwolf:
yep. I wonder how that leaves DC... "the only place in the world where microdonations work!" :)

Note that tipjoy was a Y combinator startup and followed the standards to the T: got angel funding, then VC funding (close to $1M), two founders (married, actually), tried to go for exponential growth (twitter app, etc), and still it failed, whereas DC is still here :)

mouser:
whenever i hear about people getting a million dollars in funding it just blows my mind.. the cool things we could do with a million dollars in funding.. and yet people just throw it away like candy.

but i suppose one of the benefits of operating the way we do is that it's impossible for us to die 8)

mouser:
This actually reminds me i've been wanting to make a fun thought-experiment post about what we would actually do with such large funding/donations. I'm going to start a thread on it this coming week, and we'll see what we can come up with, could be interesting to see what people can dream up.

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