Micropayments have had several kicks at the bucket for as long as we could remember. A more recent attempt at it is tipjoy. You can read their FAQ and information to get a sense at how they are doing things differently than the other micropayment schemes. On the whole, I am enthusiastic about their user interface and approach.
While tipjoy was intended to reward content providers (i.e. interesting articles or useful software), I am interested in turning the mechanism on its head. In what cases would I be interested in rewarding my readers and users, instead of the other way around? The classic would be of course a lottery-based scheme to reward their patronage.
Of course, a higher-value reason why I would want to reward my readers is of course for market research. I still remember getting $100 for participating in something quite a few years ago.
So, in what case or scenario would you want to reward your users in a monetary way for their participation? Do you want more than just play-money karma? Penny for your thoughts…
I like to follow the trends, but I’m not much of a trend-setter. For example, I’ve know about Twitter since it came out but I was on the side of the nah-sayers. “My God, it’s totally useless!” I’m finally coming around and figuring out what it’s all about. This little video sure made the case for me:
I came to my senses and realized how crappy the site looks with the ads. Tired of the blog-ghetto look, I took out the offending adsense ads and modified the theme.
I wished that I played it through once without reading the spoilers – but the experience is not diminished even though I know what will happen. The article (yes it has spoilers) where I originally read about Passage pretty much gave everything away if you can’t spare 5 minute (or you are having technical difficulties running it).
