Twitter Payments API contest - win a MacBook Air!

Tipjoy has opened up an API which can power payments for Twitter applications. Now you can sell goods and services over Twitter. We can't wait to see what you'll make with it.

To help get the creative juices flowing, we're going to give away a 1.6GHz MacBook Air to the team who makes the coolest use of our API.

For example, now you can make an app that will

1. Power e-commerce over twitter - sell your content: mp3s, videos, text, virtual goods, whatever: p $1 http://music-site.com/good-song.mp3 because I love this band
2. Charge for premium content and premium services: p $2 @tweetie to get your awesome iPhone app
3. Raise money for causes and non-profits: p $2 @charitywater to help build wells for those without clean drinking water
4. Enable P2P payments and gifting: p $5 @abbyxmix go buy yourself some cheesecake for your birthday

Because Twitter is a broadcast platform, these payments are social. That's very valuable. A microgiving cause gets the benefit of all the user's followers seeing the payment. A premium twitter app paid using Tipjoy gets a free advertisement on Twitter. It's not an orchestrated "social media marketing" effort - it's real people actually using your service.

We'll be judging the entrants by the following criteria:

1. creativity, aesthetics and design
2. amount of money transacted
3. number of unique users, users new to Tipjoy, repeat users
4. reach across the social graph

We'll announce the winner of the MacBook Air by the end of the day on Friday, May 15. All participants will receive some cool Tipjoy schwag, and we'll tweet and blog about the cool stuff you've made.

To get started, check out our Twitter Payments Tutorial. Then head over to the API page for the details. To help us track who creates which accounts, set a User-Agent, or add a user_agent parameter to any of our calls.

Once your app is live, fill out this form to tell us about it.

Email us any time at founders@tipjoy.com. You can bounce ideas off of us, ask questions about the API, suggest enhancements, or just say hi. You should also check out the new Tipjoy Developers mailing list.

Happy coding!