tipjoy.com :: our 2 ¢

So long, and thanks for all the fish

2009-08-20T21:27:00.001-07:00

Tipjoy is shutting down.

You can still sign in and cash out funds. We've also made it easy to download all your transaction history. But all other functionality on the site is now turned off.

If you have a positive balance, you will soon receive a formal notification describing the shutdown process, which will include a reasonable deadline before which you will need to claim your funds.

If you have any questions about your account, send us email: help@tipjoy.com

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: help@tipjoy.com

Thanks,
Ivan & Abby - Team Tipjoy

Charities on Twitter

2009-05-12T14:45:00.000-07:00

Twitter Applications can now use Tipjoy API with Twitter OAuth credentials, instead of Twitter Passwords.

2009-04-21T10:21:00.000-07:00

We recently pushed an exciting update to the Tipjoy API. Twitter Apps no long need to store passwords for their Twitter users to access our API - they can use OAuth.

OAuth is a new authentication scheme that Twitter has rolled out to replace requiring Twitter users to give others their password.

This API update is great because there has been a lot of discussion lately about OAuth not allowing twitter mashups, and we think we're the first to deploy a solution. This problem is best illustrated with an example.

TweetDeck can post a picture to TwitPic using a user's twitter username and password.
Then TwitPic could use that same username and password create a TwitPic account (verified with a call to Twitter) and also to post a tweet to Twitter with a link to the picture.

If a user grants TweetDeck OAuth access to Twitter, Twitter gives TweetDeck a secret key for that user. TweetDeck then "signs" each request to Twitter with the secret, but shouldn't send that key to Twitter with the API request.

So if TweetDeck wants to communicate with TwitPic, how can they do it? Unlike a password, you couldn't share that secret key. TweetDeck can't send a request to TwitPic that TwitPic could use to post a tweet, and TwitPic can't verify that TweetDeck has access to that user at all.

Our solution is to create a pre-signed request to the Twitter API that a 3rd party can use to verify the user. In the example, TwitPic could take this signed request, and ask Twitter if it is legit. If so, they can post the picture and even make a TwitPic account. TwitPic can't tweet on behalf of the user, but that's OK. TweetDeck can make the tweet, and just link the picture.

For Tipjoy, 3rd party applications can give still use OAuth, and also use our API to create Tipjoy accounts, initiate payments, get Tipjoy balance information, etc.

We think this is pretty cool.

Tipjoy API Idea #2: Paid Protected accounts

2009-04-15T19:00:00.000-07:00

People use Twitter to spread links to cool things. Some of those links could be really valuable:
- Early access to blog posts, before they hit the front page
- Links to coupons for discounts on other services
- Secrets from an authoritative, though perhaps anonymous, group
- Thoughts from renown thinkers, who would rather get cash to donate to a charity than have everyone follow them

We think there should be an easy way to power paid protected accounts, where followers could gain access by tweeting a payment. You can easily build a service which lets people make paid protected accounts with Tipjoy's Twitter Payments API. Here is how:

You'll need the Twitter credentials for both the protected account and those who are following it. Let the protected account customize the price, and give them a landing page on your service to customize where potential followers go to pay for access. Create Tipjoy accounts for the protected account and the new followers.

The status updates for the target account should be protected. Ideally this would be done with a Twitter API call, but that doesn't appear to exist for this functionality. Instead, you can send protected-account creators to their Twitter Account Settings page to do this.

For the new followers, after they have Tipjoy accounts, they pay to subscribe. First, initiate a payment over Twitter. It should be directed to the account to be followed. It could also be directed at the permalink on the service for the protected user, e.g. http://paid_twitter_account.com/ikirigin for @ikirigin. If not directed at the protected user, periodic payouts to that user from the service could be used to transfer the funds over. If the service were to take a cut, this would be one way to take it: just reduce the payout. Alternatively, if you want payments go straight to the protected account, just periodically initiate payments from the protected account to the service.

Check if transaction has been paid just by looking at the return from the payment API call. If it hasn't, create a sign-in link that sends the user to http://tipjoy.com/buyMore to pay their bill. (Soon, we'll create a Tipjoy API endpoint to provide credit card information to associate with the user, so the payment fufillment step would only need to occur once for all transactions for the user.)

Track the payment if it was unpaid using this call.

Once the transaction is paid, use the Twitter API to request to follow the paid account. Approve the follower using a Twitter API call. This also might not exist yet, but we hear they are working on it. The alternative till then is to give the protected account easy management tools to know whom to approve.

You can get a batch listing of the payments sent to the protected account using this call.

Tipjoy Twitter Payments Idea #1: Gifting virtual goods

2009-04-09T09:46:00.000-07:00

Gifting and virtual goods are exploding. They're a fun and social way to tell your friends you care. Social networks and apps that build on top of them are finding that they're a great way to monetize. And every gift sent will be an ad for your service.

Build an application using our API that lets people give virtual goods over Twitter.
Create a set of virtual goods, such as images, mp3s, or short videos. Introduce scarcity: maybe each item can only be bought and shared 1000 times before it is sold out. Charge a small amount for each item, say $1.

Then users buy the good and send it to someone on Twitter, perhaps by importing their friends, and let them add a custom message.

Payments could be directed to a URL, not just a twitter username. You can make the URL the permalink for the item. It would work best if the link wasn't generic for the gift, but specific for user A giving user B an item. The tweet might then be:

@my_friend p $1 http://gifting-site/for_you I got you a Rose. Thanks for being so nice

That prominently displays the price. You could separate the payment from the notification of a gift by making them separate tweets:

p $1 http://gifting-site/for_you to give my friend a gift

@my_friend I got you a Rose. Thanks for being so nice. http://gifting-site/for_you

Twitter Payments API contest - win a MacBook Air!

2009-04-07T18:20:00.000-07:00

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!

Update To Tipjoy's API

2009-03-12T14:03:00.000-07:00

We just updated Tipjoy's API & docs.

We think it's particularly useful for Twitter Applications. You can:
- create Tipjoy accounts with Twitter credentials
- find balance information about the account
- get transaction information for a particular user
- initiate a transaction through a twitter payment automatically
- create links to send users to PayPal to pay their bill

We'd love to get any feedback or answer any questions about this. Join our Tipjoy Developers google-group. This is only the start. Our next big push is to make a more general purpose API.

Help Twestival for free

2009-02-12T15:45:00.001-08:00

Help Twestival for free, #1: Tweet a link to the city blog of your choice. We'll be at http://sanfrancisco.twestival.com

Help Twestival for free, #2: Post the Twestival widget on your blog, and tweet about it. Grab the code here http://tipjoy.com/twestival/

Help Twestival for free, #3: Check out who's in the clouds http://cloud.twestival.com and tell your followers to get in there

Help Twestival for free, #4: retweet http://bit.ly/help_twestival_for_free!

An update on MicroGiving using Tipjoy on Twitter

2009-01-19T09:48:00.000-08:00

Twitter payment using Tipjoy has had a great initial success with the @wellwishes campaign. Just through tipjoy, we've raised $11,740.74 from 545 people. The median donation has been $2, meaning hundreds of people gave casually. This is a pretty big change, I think, and I hope Tipjoy grows to help non-profits as Twitter grows.

Just recently Craig Newmark and Joe Trippi both gave through Twitter. One cool thing about this is that twitter retweets are really powerful. Super users on Twitter try something, and lots of their followers see it and try it out too. That makes this campaign not only a great experiment in casual giving, but also a passively viral donation engine. Two other campaigns I'm really excited about are the Google Lunar X-Prize and The Salvation Army.

Tipjoy Inc. and Betaworks both matched $2500 on the first $5000, and will do it again if another $3200 is raised. So try it out below. Put in your twitter credentials, pledge any amount you want, all the way down to $0.01, and then fill up your Tipjoy account.* You should sign in first if you already have a Tipjoy account.

* the minimal cash-in value to Tipjoy is $5 to minimize the overhead of moving money. If you pledged $0.10, and then cashed in for $0.10, paypal would take all of it.

Bring non-profit fundraising to Twitter

2008-12-19T08:50:00.000-08:00

We launched an exciting new feature on Tipjoy yesterday. We already made it easy for Tipjoy users to pay via twitter.

We just came out with a new widget that let's new users signup and tweet a payment.

This has been an effort with @wellwishes for a very good cause. Laura Fitton is trying to get her 12,500 followers to donate $2 to help bring clean water to people in need. Tipjoy and Betaworks will match up to $10K.

You can help by going to her blog post or using the widget below. If you already have a Tipjoy account without a Twitter account hooked in, you should login first.

Just put in your twitter credentials, confirm an amount, and then follow through via PayPal. This will tweet a message that your followers can see to join the effort. This kind of viral microdonation engine is very exciting.

You can also help by posting the widget to your own blog. Here is the code for it:

<script language="javascript" src="http://tipjoy.com/twitterPaymentWidget/?twitterUsername=wellwishes&message=Can%20we%20get%2012%2C500%20people%20to%20chip%20in%20%242%20each%20to%20save%20lives&extraTweet=for%20CharityWater%20to%20save%20lives.%20What%20can%202%20do%20http%3A%2F%2Fbit.ly%2F13xKO%20You%20can%20tweet%20donate%20via%20%40tipjoy%20too"></script>

If you'd like to run a similar campaign, you can use this widget with different parameterers. We'll make this available on our widgets page soon, but here are the parameters:
- twitterUsername, in this case it is wellwishes
- message, which sets the message at the top of the widget
- extraTWeet, will be appended to the twitter message after "p$2 @username". You should include the reason and a link

So if you want to give @wbur some cash, titled "help support WBUR" with the tweet saying "p$2 @wbur to show how to be like @wellwishes http://bit.ly/7tQF", the widget code would be:

<script language="javascript" src="http://tipjoy.com/twitterPaymentWidget/?twitterUsername=wbur&message=help%20support%20WBUR&extraTweet=%20to%20show%20how%20to%20be%20like%20%40wellwishes%20http%3A%2F%2Fbit.ly%2F7tQF" ></script>

Tip via Twitter

2008-12-04T13:30:00.000-08:00

Tipjoy is happy to announce even tighter integration with Twitter.

You can now initiate payments via twitter. For example, tweeting "p @ev $1 because twitter is fun" would send $1 from your Tipjoy account to @ev.

'p' is like 'd' but for payment, not direct messages - get it?

This is an opt-in feature. To try it out, add your twitter username and password in the tipjoy settings page and click the checkbox to opt-in:
http://tipjoy.com/settings

Then start tweeting.

We'll count anything that has an @username, dollar amount, and a
payment keyword in the first three words in any order. So "p @ev $1"
and "@ev pay $1" both work.

The payment keywords are 'tipjoy', 'tip', 'pay', 'give', 'rtip', and
'p'. Case doesn't matter, so 'give', 'GIVE', and 'giVE' all work.

What is 'rtip'? It's a retweet and a tip. If you really like a tweet,
retweet it and send the author some love.

For example, @badbanana just tweeted
"My will to live is somewhere in that coffee pot."

Such hilarity certainly deserves a dollar in my book, so I just tweeted
"rtip $1 @badbanana My will to live is somewhere in that coffee pot."

custom tipjoy button code released

2008-11-14T09:33:00.001-08:00

We've got a new tipjoy widget, and it's yours for the customizing.

With this tipjoy widget you can:
- completely customize the look and feel via CSS
- display who's tipped most recently, and who's the most generous
- allow givers to leave short messages

Get it here

To see some examples, check out our previous post.

PS - to all you CSS hecklers out there, be forewarned so your head doesn't explode: to ensure compatibility across all sorts of people's sites, no matter what crazy things they do to Ps and DIVs and other tags...everything in this tipjoy widget is wrapped in a SPAN. But I don't want to blame my users - they can do whatever they want to their CSS. I'm blaming IE for not supporting custom tags which would have been a much more elegant solution.
____

Just want a basic button? Or a goal thermometer? Check out all your options here.

tipjoy for your tumblelog

2008-11-13T07:58:00.001-08:00

Tipjoy is working in a beta partnership with tumblr to help their users earn money from their tumblelogs.

We've got a new custom button on a few tumbelogs. The UI is completely customizable via CSS. The widget shows recent and most generous tippers.

Here are a few great examples:
matthewbuchanan.name
blog.davidchartier.com
flyingpizzakitty.com
147xxxx.tumblr.com

We'll be making this custom code available to anyone for any site very soon. In the meantime if you'd like an advance copy of the code, email us at: founders[at]tipjoy.com

Tipjoy starts giving out gold stars

2008-10-24T09:17:00.000-07:00

We all enjoyed receiving those precious gold stars for good work in
grade school.

We at Tipjoy liked them so much that we started handing them out. If
you've ever followed through and paid your tips, you're a "verified" tipjoy user. You'll find a gold star next to your username when it appears on Tipjoy.

As an example, you can see quite a few verified tipjoy users at our popular tips page.

Now's your chance to get a head start on the forthcoming tipjoy leaderboard. Want a gold star? Sure you do! Visit tipjoy and pay your bill today.

recent updates to tipjoy: tip amount now customizable

2008-10-07T10:04:00.000-07:00

The old way: a click on a tip button was always 10¢ unless the user went to their settings and changed it to another amount.

The new way: people creating new Tipjoy buttons can set the amount they want the click to be worth. The user-defined default setting has been removed.

We did this in response to the large demand from site owners to change the amount they receive from each person. Many, many users wanted to ask for more money. Meanwhile only a very small number of active users changed their default tip value setting.

All buttons made using the old system will not change. They will continue to be 10¢ per tip click.

New sites can choose to change the amount to anything less than $25 and at least a penny. The amount will be displayed in the widget, right by the button.

Furthermore, all Tipjoy buttons on Tipjoy.com are now set to 25¢, up from the previous default of 10¢.

As always, let us know what you think.

Tipjoy: "now you can!" (sell digital content)

2008-09-26T07:06:00.000-07:00

We've found ourselves having to explain the differences between PayPal and Tipjoy several times in the last few days. Obviously we need to be clearer. How's this:

Tipjoy...
...lets you keep more of your earnings for yourself. We aggregate
payments and take a small fee, and so you get to keep a lot more of
your money when you sell through Tipjoy than if you sell through
PayPal.
...provides a much better experience for your customers. Buying with
Tipjoy is one click and doesn't take your customers away from your
page, unlike PayPal's 9+ click process which takes your users away
from your site.
...encourages your customers to share your content with their
friends, through feeds to social networks like Twitter and FriendFeed,
RSS feeds, and emails.

Here are some more details on PayPal's fee structure vs. Tipjoy's:
PayPal takes 2.9% of your earnings, plus $0.30.

The reason PayPal is structured like this is that it is designed for
selling very expensive goods, like cars, jewelery, and vintage toys.
If you want to sell a $500 necklace, you get to keep $485.20, or 97%
of your earnings. That's great!

But you can't charge $500 for MP3s, blog posts, and virtual roses.
Probably you're going to charge some amount between 1 and 99 cents.
And for that, PayPal really doesn't meet your needs. For example, if
you earn $2 with PayPal, you have to pay them $.36. You only get to
keep $1.64. That's only 82% of your total earnings.

Tipjoy is designed to sell virtual goods. Goods which cost how ever
little (or much) you want.

At Tipjoy, we do payment aggregation. Which basically just means that
people say they're going to buy a bunch of stuff from all sorts of
different merchants, and then they pay for it all at once, in a single
transaction. By grouping the payments together, the fees are divided
across a much larger amount of money, and each merchant's individual
fees get much smaller. So much smaller, that even with our 3%
commission, you still keep more of your money with Tipjoy than with
PayPal. The larger people's bill is when they pay it, the smaller
your fees are. Currently, the typical Tipjoy bill amount is $5. This
means that when you take $2 out of your Tipjoy account, you can expect
to actually keep 86.5% of it, or $1.73. And it only gets better from
there: as people buy more with Tipjoy, and their bills get closer to
$10, you'll get to keep 89.5% of your $2. When they're closer to $20,
you'll get to keep 91.4%.

Make great content and sell it for cheap. Make it easy for your
customers to buy. Make it fun and social. With Tipjoy, now you can.

Announcing Series A financing lead by Betaworks

2008-09-24T18:01:00.001-07:00

We are delighted to announce that Tipjoy has closed a Series A round of financing led by Betaworks. Betaworks is a seed stage platform for investing in and building Internet based businesses. Its network includes Tumblr, Twitter (Summize), Outside.in and others.

Others in the round make for a stellar group of investors and advisers with The Accelerator Group, David Shen Ventures, Chris Sacca, Taavet Hinrikus, and Ron Bouganim.

We're more than just the easiest way to leave tips for great online content. We make it easy to buy and sell any digital content. As an example, we've made a PDF version of this announcement available for 99¢. A single click grants access to this document. New users need only enter their email address. Tipjoy transactions are decoupled from the payment processing, making the user experience super-simple. Here is our announcement widget.

Simplicity in digital payments is a primary value of Tipjoy. We understand the difference between selling physical goods and digital goods. The old-fashioned systems currently out there were designed so that people could sell physical goods from their brick-and-mortar stores over the internet. Digital goods are fundamentally different.

We know that this document isn't really worth 99¢. But bits are bits, and there are a lot of bits out there that you would pay 99¢ for. Comics which made you laugh, amazing videos, MP3s of great local bands, genuinely useful web apps. Tipjoy makes giving money for any digital content just a single click.

Tipjoy understands that when you give money to something you love online, you're doing it as a social gesture. We encourage you to share great content, see who the patrons are, be the top giver, and tweet about it. Here's the Tipjoy link for this announcement

Tipjoy is also announcing that we're allowing cash-out via PayPal. As always, you can also choose to buy yourself an Amazon gift card or dedicating your earnings to another site or to charity. We look forward to continuing to make it easier for you to get your money in and out of Tipjoy by leveraging additional payment processors in the future.

All proceeds from the sale of this PDF will be donated to the storm relief fund Yéle Haiti.

Tipjoy is the new online tip jar

2008-08-26T17:45:00.000-07:00

Seth Godin recently told us all to click ads on sites we like.

Of course, it's our opinion at Tipjoy that instead of clicking ads, it would make much more sense to leave the content creator some money directly. Cut out the middle man, and do it without leaving the page, and certainly without being taken to an annoying ad page.

But now, let me talk a bit about why I think Seth wrote this, and what it means about the web today.

The sentiment of this article is spot-on: if you're not paying for all the free stuff you love online, you're "starving great content".

This post is yet another great example of how the world is starting to change their mindset around digital content. At first, content creators tried to make people pay to get everything. That didn't work; we all turned away. So content creators gave their content away for free, and we all came flocking. Now we are starting to feel a bit guilty about getting all of this great content without having to pay for it: great independent music, thoughtful articles, comics which make us laugh, videos which make us laugh until we cry.

And we're not just feeling guilty because we're 'starving' them. We're feeling guilty because increasingly, we're not just content consumers. We're content producers ourselves. In this world of mashups, remixes and samples, the lines between producer and consumer are blurred.

As I read Seth's article, I scanned the page for ads to click on, and what I found were links to his books. So perhaps Seth's motives are not entirely altruistic. And that's absolutely fine.

Let's all continue to distribute the great stuff we make for free. And let's make money from it.

Read the thread at hacker news for some interesting discussions around tipping vs. ad clicking.

Twitter Hello-World: that was easy

2008-07-22T14:47:00.000-07:00

I'm working on Twitter integration for Tipjoy. It's going to be all about pushing your favorite content out to your friends on twitter, like our FriendFeed integration.

I just finished a 'hello world' integration. Here is the result.

Here is the code:

#!/usr/bin/python
import urllib
import urllib2
import urlparse
username = "tipjoy"
password = "get.your.own"
realm = "Twitter API"
url = 'http://twitter.com/statuses/update.json'
(scheme, netloc, path, params, query, fragment) = urlparse.urlparse(url)
handler = urllib2.HTTPBasicAuthHandler()
handler.add_password(realm, netloc, username, password)
opener = urllib2.build_opener(handler)
text = "hello from python"
data = {'status': text}
encoded_data = urllib.urlencode(dict([(k, unicode(v).encode('utf-8')) for k, v in data.items()]))
url_data = opener.open(url, encoded_data).read()

Share great stuff worth giving money to

2008-07-17T11:37:00.000-07:00

Here's a new way to broadcast things you love online. The stuff you really love enough to leave some money for.

It's now really easy for people to share content they've given money to on Tipjoy.

For example, check out this link: http://tipjoy.com/joy/34010/

Below the content's info, there's now a 'share' section. We've given each piece of content its own link, in this example it's: http://tipjoy.com/7Rk

Put that link in email, IM, Tweet it, and people will get to see the content immediately and have the option to give money to it with our frame on top.

You can also email this link automatically through us using the form on the page.

Check out Tweetsnap

2008-07-05T23:42:00.001-07:00

They made this superbly simple widget:

Changes to the Tipjoy button

2008-06-27T09:51:00.000-07:00

The Tipjoy button has gotten an upgrade. Here's what's new:

If you're signed into Tipjoy, the button lets you know by showing your username and showing the tip amount you've set in your settings. For example, my buttons all say: "Hi abby, give 50¢"

If you're not signed in or not a user, you see the 'enter your email' field right away. We think this an improvement for several reasons. With the previous button we would frequently see users click the tipjoy button and then not notice that the email field appeared. This way they see right away what is required of them. Also, we've removed one click from the process, making things even more streamlined.

Now, your custom message appears above this area, and you've got another area underneath to add more notes.

We've also added a 'get tipjoy for your site' link on all buttons and a 'what's tipjoy?' link for people who do not have accounts. We've received a lot of feedback that people want a link to explain what tipjoy and this tip button is, so we are excited to include this addition.

If the user is signed in, next to the tipjoy links they'll see their balance. They can click it to go directly to our site and pay their bill. Tipjoy button owners should be excited about this - we've already seen it increase the frequency at which people 'make good' on their tips.

Once you tip, in addition to the 'give more' link you can now go directly to the 'comment' page. As long as you're signed in, the button will stay in the 'thanks' state, displaying the total you've given to it.

Finally, you can now set the width of the button to whatever works best for your site, and how much you want to say in your personal messages. The button below, for example, is 440px wide:

Customize your own button!

We've also beefed up our plugin support, and have new Wordpress and Textpattern plugins. Our TypePad integration now accepts the customization options you set. We're working on new site-specific instructions to add to our list - if you've got one you'd like to see listed, please let us know.

Now that it's in the NYT, the problem is real: social networks aren't making the $$ from ads they thought they would

2008-06-16T16:17:00.000-07:00

NYT, June 15: MySpace Might Have Friends, but It Wants Ad Money

Here at Tipjoy we've been talking about this for months. The MySpace generation is not clicking on ads the way their older brethren are. Advertising relies on a very small sliver of the population (Dave Morgan, July 19, 2007):

"Ninety-nine percent of Web users do not click on ads on a monthly basis. Of the 1% that do, most only click once a month. Less than two tenths of one percent click more often. That tiny percentage makes up the vast majority of banner ad clicks."

And this sliver simply does not cut through the demographic of social network sites such as MySpace and Facebook.

And yet the executives cannot let go of advertising. They're still thinking, 'how can we tweak the ads to dupe people into clicking them?'

Instead of continuing to think in the old mindset of advertising, it's time for a new model. One that supports the social connections between people, and does it directly, not through an advertiser third party.

This younger generation has already proven that it is willing to voluntarily pay for the music of bands it likes like Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead. Young internet users are using the internet to connect to people personally and directly. They don't see the artists they love as 'icons' but rather as peers, friends, all part of the same community. By enabling a way for people to become patrons of the virtual content they love, we're fostering those connections in a way that advertising never can. The site owners and artists who realize this will be able to harness the power, and the pocketbooks, of their communities more successfully than advertising ever will.

Add Tipjoy to FriendFeed!

2008-06-11T09:23:00.000-07:00

The good folks at FriendFeed just added a bunch of new services, including Tipjoy!

To add Tipjoy to your feed, you need to make your tipping public by going here: tipjoy.com/settings

Then you should go to FriendFeed and add Tipjoy (it's under "See all 40 services"). You'll need to input your Tipjoy username.

Stuff people are willing to pay for is really valuable. When I did a search on Tipjoy for YouTube some of the best videos out there came up. Awesome! If you add your Tipjoy feed to FriendFeed then you'll be able to share your favorite content with your friends.

It's also cool that the integration is all with RSS. FriendFeed is just reading what we already make publicly available. Here is the page and feed that FriendFeed is reading for my tip stream.

You can follow me on FriendFeed here.

Developers, developers, developers!

2008-06-04T10:33:00.000-07:00

Are you the best developer you know? Tipjoy is going to be huge. Because we only want the best, we want you to be a part of it.

Tipjoy is a new micropayments service that will revolutionize how payments are done online. We're strong supporters of free culture and currently support a voluntary payments model. We make it extremely easy for people to leave tips for stuff they love online. Rather than turning people away by gating content, Tipjoy allows people to choose to leave a tip for a content if they think it was valuable.

Requirements:

0. You need to be really, really smart.

Plus:

1. A sense of aesthetics and design
2. Deep knowledge of the tools we use: Linux, Python, Django, Javascript, CSS, and some Flash/ActionScript
3. Experience in configuration, scaling, and deployment for servers and databases.
4. Experience managing complex, dynamic systems (especially people)

We like effective people that can focus to get things done and make real things. We're building a culture which demands excellence. We understand that anything that lets you perform better is worth it: fully loaded Macs, enormous monitors, Aeron chairs, food, etc.

Apply by sending mail to founders@tipjoy.com

Make sure to tell us about something you've made that you are proud of. You can also try your hand at these puzzles:

Puzzle 1: explain python generator expressions in 140 characters or less and tweet the answer to @tipjoy
Puzzle 2: Concatenate the page source for each level of http://www.pythonchallenge.com/ and find the number of times the substring 'tipjoy' can be found via character removal.
Puzzle 3: Make up a puzzle which can be solved in less than 30 minutes which we're unable to solve. It must be possible for us to find the solution, and you need to know it.

Tipjoy is Hiring! Law student/Paralegal

2008-06-04T10:32:00.000-07:00

Are you a law student or paralegal who is interested in the intersection of technology, finance and law?

Tipjoy is a new micropayments service that will revolutionize how payments are done online. We're strong supporters of free culture and currently support a voluntary payments model. We make it extremely easy for people to leave tips for stuff they love online. Rather than turning people away by gating content, Tipjoy allows people to choose to leave a tip for a content if they think it was valuable.

Tipjoy needs to prepare legal paperwork in order to be regulated as a Money Transfer Agent with the US government and all 50 states. This paperwork will enable Tipjoy to allow its users (even those outside the US) to withdraw cash from their accounts.

We are looking for someone with legal expertise who wants to learn more about the ins and outs of trying to start a new business in the financial space. This person will be expected to gather and complete all the necessary paperwork, as well as research precedence and recommend strategy in this area.

This could be anything from a paid summer internship to a full time position as one of the first hires in a growing, capitalized startup with strong ties to the startup community including the Y Combinator network. That all depends on you.

Paralegal experience and/or completion of your first year of law school is required. The greater your qualifications, the greater your potential to be very influential in shaping the future of Tipjoy.

If you are interested, please send your resume to us at: founders@tipjoy.com

Announcing The New Platform API

2008-05-27T09:28:00.000-07:00

We're very happy to announce a new service at Tipjoy. It's called the Platform API and it makes is easy for sites that host content to split tips with content creators.

This is really exciting because it means more of the great content online will be tippable. Both the content creators and the hosts directly benefit from the support of fans of the content.

The Platform API is in closed beta, and you'll find an application here.

We have some excellent partners doing some initial testing of the service. They include Disqus, Weebly, bug.gd, OurDoings, iJigg.

We'll be showcasing each of these services and how they'll use Tipjoy.

But to give you an idea of why our partners are excited, here is Matthew, co-founder of bug.gd:

For us over at bug.gd — this is really a handy concept. We thrive off of users contributing their findings back to the community.

Over the years, it’s always struck me as odd that there hasn’t been an easy way online of showing one’s token of gratitude to those who saved you lots of time. Now sites can build that plumbing into their communities without much hassle at all.

Whether it's coders helping each other out or reading a hilarious blog post, giving back has never been easier.

Some recent updates to Tipjoy

2008-05-25T19:17:00.001-07:00

It's always busy at Tipjoy HQ. We're always working to add new features to the service.

Early on, we made a bookmarklet that lets you tip any page while you're on it, even if they don't have a Tipjoy button. Lots of people still don't know this. So check it out here.

We've worked on how we showcase content on Tipjoy. We want to highlight all that great stuff:

- Featured sites that have started using Tipjoy

- The most popular sites that have made the most money

- The 'Just Tipped' page, which lists the newest and hottest content

We're working to make Tipjoy more social. One aspect of this is making tipping public. You can see everyone that has tipped Rescue Time (a service I obsessively use). You can also see everything a single user has tipped. Here is my stream.

You can set your tips to be public on your settings page.

We've also syndicated most of these pages with RSS. Just click on the RSS icon where ever you see it:

Finally, we've incorporated Disqus to power comments on Tipjoy. I think we can even take this a step further by feeding too and from comment streams on sites that use Disqus. I hear they're working on something to support this.

Ohh, and you can follow us on twitter here to get more updates. I have a pretty exciting idea of how to integrate Tipjoy with Twitter. It'll be chocolate & peanut butter or gin & tonic. Look for it soon.

A solution to domain names

2008-04-24T17:13:00.000-07:00

Domain names are broken. Squatters abound. Registration is ridiculous. I vented a bit about this on twitter, and @fredwilson asked for a solution. This got me thinking.

If search were good enough, "I'm feeling lucky" could replace the need for domain names. URLs are meant to be read by machines anyway. Enter something into the URL bar. If it is a cut & paste URL, it takes you there. If not, you're sent to the first search result. Google should weight “I’m feeling lucky” to return the top N search results if the top result isn’t sufficiently higher relevance than the rest.

Links would still work - they would just have IPs.

A forward naming scheme to get a short description of the IP would remove all naming exclusivity. You could even expand this to tagging.

67.207.131.191 could map to tipjoy. It could also map to "free culture” and “make money blogging”.

74.86.111.8 and 66.55.141.20 could each map to "sex". Content and pagerank would determine which gets listed higher in search engines.

The only problem with this scheme is the search component. It needs to be good enough so a good description of a particular web page will result in a successful search.

This isn't a perfect solution, but squatting would be completely eliminated. Naming a company wouldn't be a matter of getting the domain name. People could focus on making something people want.

UPDATE: any issues around things that utilize DNS could just start using a domain numbering service layer. Anything that doesn't tie the character string to something people associate with the site. That doesn't scale.

Startup Lyrics

2008-04-14T21:29:00.000-07:00

I'm driving across the country right now, listening to a lot of music. Some lyrics stand out - reminding me of startups.

Here are a few, with a short mix tape at the end. If you have any others, post a comment and I'll add them to the mix.

Update: I'll add the song suggested over at HackerNews shortly.

Timbaland - "The Way I Are". This might be a stretch, but I love this song. A good startup might be cash strapped, but willing to give equity to early important hires. It's not about the perks, but the aligned incentives to work to build the future.

Oh, baby, it's alright now, you ain't gotta flaunt for me
If we go dutch, you can still touch my love, it's free
We can work without the perks just you and me
Thug it out 'til we get it right

The White Stripes - "Little Room". Start small, get big.

When you're in your little room
and you're working on something good
but if it is really good
You're gonna need a bigger room
and when you're in the bigger room
You might not know what to do
You might have to think of
How you got started sittin' in your little room

Daft Punk - "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger". Nothing is perfect. That's actually really good. Things can always get better. Go work on that. The version I used is from the latest live album 'Alive'. Excellent mix with "Around The World"

Work It Harder Make It Better
Do It Faster, Makes Us stronger
More Than Ever Hour After
Our Work Is Never Over

More customization options, and more social tipping

2008-04-06T22:20:00.001-07:00

We just released some updates to the Tipjoy button maker. Go here to check them out.

This allows you to make more custom options. For example, you can change the text in the button, and add a message to the bottom, like this:

We also added comments to each item in Tipjoy, and let you see who has tipped it, if their tips are set to be public.

Go here for an example.

Change your settings to make your tips public here.

Take "Free Public Wifi" to the next level

2008-03-29T11:40:00.000-07:00

Here is an interesting post about a viral SSID

The idea is that a windows box that can't find a wireless connection will become the first node in an ad hoc network with SSID "Free Public Wifi". Others join, setting the SSID in their preferred list. So it spreads virally despite no connection to the net.

This is very interesting.

I'd like this to be taken to the next level, and I'm sure many of those searching for some entertainment on the internet while stranded in the airport would agree.

Why not actually use the ad hoc network for connecting socially or playing games? Wouldn't it be a lovely parting gift from a failed attempt to connect the the internet to be able to play a WLAN game or chat with someone?

This is something mobile game consoles understand, often with the build in ability to battle people nearby.

Location based wired interactions like this are very young. We'll undoubtedly see more of it.

So a few trends put together probably make a winner: casual gaming + the social net + ad hoc location based networks.

How to hack together a Y Combinator application

2008-03-26T13:46:00.000-07:00

Tipjoy was funded by Y Combinator. The program is excellent, mainly because of the quality of the people accepted. The alumni network will prove to be the most valuable part of the program.

The YC applications are due and you should apply. The application will help crystallize your ideas because it is actually an excellent product design tool. I liked it so much I did it twice.

The deadline is fast approaching. I've been told that ~~the best~~ a surprising number of good people apply late - that's you. Here is how to hack together an application very quickly.

Writing:

Write the answers to all the questions quickly. It should take 20 minutes or less. Get anything and everything on the page. Then the important part happens: EDIT.

Editing is a very under-appreciated writing skill. I think this stems from the way we think about writing in school - a '5 page essay' is due, and so quantity is mistaken for quality.

Once you've written down everything you could possibly want to say, whittle it down by removing all extraneous phrases. Often you can remove the first few words of paragraphs, which are usually statements like 'in my opinion' or something equivalently useless. Don't use obscure words. Don't use marketing language - just plainly describe things like you would to a friend.

Building:

Build a demo.

They're looking for real hackers: people that have built things. In the application, write about the cool things you've built.

Haven't built anything yet? Build a demo. Now.

Talking:

Talking through an idea is a fundamental product design tool. Make a pitch, one that involves walking through a demo, and give it to your friends. This is primarily for the interview, but it will help you application in the same way writing helps.

Expressing ideas in different modalities makes them better. This is like trying to learn something. If you have a set of vocabulary words or chemical formulas, it helps to first read them, then read them aloud, write them on note cards to practice, etc. That's sight, sound, and touch. I've been told adding an association to some smell, for example an orange, also helps.

So write about your idea, talk about your idea. Smell your ideas. If they stink, throw them out.

We made this pitch into a fun night. We invited a few friends over, bought them some pizza and beer, and pitched to them. This practice was absolutely invaluable. Our pitch changed 180 degrees from the first time we practiced in front of friends to our interview.

YC applications are due - 3 questions to ask yourself

2008-03-21T14:19:00.001-07:00

YC applications are due soon! In case you're on the fence, here are some reasons you should join us:

1. Do you love being interviewed? If you're the type of person who's favorite part of a job was the interview process, you should start your own company, because having a startup is like constantly being interviewed, which is fun. Also, many people may know that feeling of excitement and hope when they start a new job - the hope that 'this one will be different'. Well, unfortunately, it probably won't, not unless it's your own company or I guess a very small new startup. (I have no experience with this but I hope it is different since we're going to be hiring soon!) From talking to my friends who have been and are at other big name tech companies, it doesn't sound like my experiences have been unique.

2. Have you ever wanted to do other people's jobs at your company - to get a chance to improve your skills and do stuff you're not already an expert at? At my previous jobs, I was hired to do the thing I was best at. All the stuff I was second best at was done by other people who's jobs it were to just do those things. At a startup, you need to do it all. So you are able to hone ALL your skills, not just those which are already the sharpest.

3. Do you want to really experience a 'fast-paced environment'? When I worked for other people, we always had a ton of work and everyone was always running around like chickens without heads. Still, products took ages to get to market, were always delayed, and always had about 1/10 of the features they were supposed to. So, although I was busy, it felt like progress was slow. When you work for yourself, every single thing your company makes will be made exactly how you want it to be, and the only limit on your pace is yourself.

UPDATE:
I forgot to add my #4 reason - excuse to eat a yummy ramen lunch: Use only about 2 cm of water in a pan, and put in 2 ramen noodles with 1 flavor packet. Put in a bag of baby spinach, or a bushel of kale, and cover to steam the veggies. Finally, mix in an egg. YUM.

newspapers: not necessarily doomed

2008-03-12T13:44:00.000-07:00

Response from August 10 to Henry Blodget post about doomed newspapers:

There are two aspects to what we think of as a "newspaper": the physical medium and the content aggregation of mainstream print journalism.

The physical medium of paper is in many ways superior to our current generation of displays. It won't go away until we have daylight readable 20000:1 contrast-ratio flexible displays. That doesn't mean the print-newspaper business isn't doomed. Subscription numbers are in a nose dive, and still have a long way to fall.

Yet the aggregation of mainstream print journalism via a different medium still has a chance for success. The killer app for mainstream media is producing quality content. Bloggers can't support foreign offices, for example. Micheal Yon, Micheal Totten and other "embedded bloggers" are the exceptions that prove the rule. Distributed locality where you don't need a correspondent in, say, Beijing because Chinese Bloggers cover it, only partially solves this. There is something to be said for an expert outsider reporting news & trends.

So newspapers aren't necessarily screwed. If there were a way to directly support good content proportional to its value, good written journalism provided by online newspapers could survive and even thrive. The high hurdles of subscription and premium content and the indirect path of ad revenue aren't good enough. The article is right about the numbers.

I'm working on a startup that would allow a distributed set of people to directly support online content. In this way, newspapers could evolve to become aggregations of professional bloggers and journalists, providing high quality content for a profit.

In your experience...

2008-03-07T12:17:00.000-08:00

...do all good companies have a second tier follower shouting 'me too' constantly?

http://www.26econ.com/tipjoy/

http://webworkerdaily.com/2008/02/28/tipjoy-micropayments/

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/02/10/tipjoy-a-better-tip-jar-for-content/#comment-2000805

We'll just take it as a compliment.

Tipping Experiment

2008-03-05T10:37:00.000-08:00

Aaron at 26 Econ is running an interesting experiment, asking people to rate how much they would tip each post, and has a few amounts available. There is no money transfered, it is just a test.

A succinct definition of web2.0

2008-03-04T14:02:00.000-08:00

"Web 2.0, a phrase popularized by conference organizer Tim O'Reilly, refers to the current generation of Web sites that seek to turn viewers into contributors by giving them tools to write, post, comment and upload their own creative work."

This nice definition comes from a Reuters article which reports that participation in online communities is lower than expected. It does not speculate why this may be.

Low participation could be due to the fact that there is a high barrier to community contribution - making a video, writing a blog post, even taking and uploading a picture takes creativity and, above all, time. Tipping provides a simple and easy alternative way to contribute to your community.

(originally posted August 28, 2007)

The micropayments challenge

2008-03-03T18:13:00.000-08:00

(Originally posted August 28, 2007)

The New York Times recently published this article about micropayments: In Online World, Pocket Change Is Not Easily Spent.

I'm surprised that no one is talking about how all current schemes of micropayments have made it so that payment is mandatory. Requiring people to pay before reading an article or listening to a song is one thing, while letting people choose whether or not something was worth their money, after they're free to use it, is another.
From the NYT article: "...a large newspaper could sell subscriptions that would allow its readers to download music from iTunes or Rhapsody, read articles from regional papers, and watch movies and TV shows from YouTube or Comedy Central."

This sounds like bribery to me - read our paper and you can have some free music. Instead of treating their readership like children, we should instead treat them with respect. Allow customers to choose what content is worth paying for.

Again, from the NYT article: " "Open loop" systems, where the consumer pays many merchants through a single payments processor — the way micropayments were originally envisioned — are much less successful. "To date, the market has said there is insufficient demand for these services," concluded a research report Mercator published in April."

We take this as a challenge.

We believe that turning micorpayments on their head - making paying voluntary rather than compulsory - will be the key differentiator between ourselves and those who have come before us.

Just because something hasn't been successful before does not mean it is not possible. There is a time and a place for everything. Combine that with a thoughtful execution and you will succeed.

The fact that up until now micropayment systems haven't worked is due to many cultural factors. Right now there are more people online than ever before, and they are online in an interactive and shared environment. They are not just trolls, they are contributors to communities. They don't want to pay in order to receive content, but they want to give back, develop and support their communities. The time is right for micropayment tipping.

on free content

2008-03-02T19:33:00.000-08:00

In the last half of 2007 Ivan and I had a movable type blog. When we switched Tipjoy servers, it came down and hasn't yet made it back up. There was some interesting content on that blog, and I'd like to repost it here. I'm going to start reposting a few of the old blog posts if I feel they're still relevant and interesting. Here's the first. Originally posted on October 10, 2007:

Content thrives when free. When people push their work out into the world, the long tail finds them. Fans come out of the woodwork.

Free content enables creators to be successful without making it to the 'top 10' universe. For example, the online publishing revolution has given everyone the tools to write, and with these there has been an explosion of freely available personal journals, professional bloggers, non-fiction authors, and digital fiction literature.

The result is two-fold: not only can a few previously obscure writers can rise to fame based soley on the quality of their work, but more importantly, readers can now browse a previously unheard of array of content options in order to find their niche interest.

Let's take music as another example. A small minority of musicians get a small minority of the money made on the sale of a CD on Amazon or mp3 through iTunes. A great deal of the money goes to third parties (neither makers nor fans) that are litigating their way to securing their share, earned for an outdated task. Meanwhile, the vast majority of musicians are not concerned over piracy, but instead are putting their music out there any way they can in the hopes of connecting with the people who love their sound. Giving it away free helps them find their fan base.

Making content free has given the consumer unprecedented variety of choice. However, there's not a lot of money to be made in advertising or big record deals when you're a single dot on the long tail.

Since producing content comes at a cost, how can producers continue to afford to make their content free? They can tap into their fans' enthusiasm through tipjoy.

Tipjoy enables readers to keep the authors they've discovered writing, listeners to keep the musicians they've discovered making more music. Support from their fans through tipjoy enables the free content producer to continue to produce - to continue to serve their creative work from their little dot shop way out on the long tail.

Tipjoy keeps the long tail in business.

Posted on October 10, 2007 10:00 PM

Tipjoy Bookmarklet - leave a tip for any site, while you're on it

2008-02-24T23:31:00.000-08:00

Try this bookmarklet for Tipjoy.

Drag this link to your toolbar: tip this

On IE, right-click and select "Add to Favorites" and add to the "Links" folder.

Click it, and it will load a tip button on any page you're on. You don't have to go to tipjoy.com to submit URLs.

I tested it under FireFox, Safari, & Camino on OS X 10.5, and IE 7 on Windows XP -- not exactly comprehensive. If you have a problem, please let me know.

UPDATE: We updated the code at 6pm PST 2/25; grab it again if you got it before then

You gave $1000 through Tipjoy. Thanks!

2008-02-22T14:32:00.000-08:00

As of 8:21am today, Tipjoy users collectively gave $1000 to stuff they love online.

Thanks!

Continue tipping sites or blogs you love, and contact them and encourage them to claim their tips. Let them know that if they put Tipjoy on their site, they'll make even more.

our slides from the o'reilly conference

2008-02-21T16:20:00.000-08:00

O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference 2008

2008-02-12T21:32:00.000-08:00

We gave our talk last night at the O'Reilly TOC conference.
The presentation went very well. We even made it into the TOC Flickr photoset :)

I'll post a link to the slides soon.

Overall, we've had several interesting conversations with bloggers and web application developers while here. Looks like we'll have a few new partners to work with as we develop our 'platform' offering, which will allow a platform to share in the tip profits of the authors/content providers working for them. If there are others out there interested in participating, please send us an email.

It's been a challenge to keep on top of all feedback from our hotel room, but I think it has been going well. We've got some really great users out there!

crunched

2008-02-10T18:08:00.000-08:00

so we got techcrunched a bit earlier than we expected! We just spent the last hour fixing bugs and responding to feedback from the floor of the Dallas apt. Now I'm blogging from the runway - our flight is delayed.
Anyway, if you sent us feedback THANKS and we will get back to you as soon as we can.

omg we were techcrunched

2008-02-10T17:05:00.001-08:00

We quietly made tipjoy.com live on Friday afternoon. It has been extremely helpful to get something up and running with real users. They've helped us find bugs, and motivate us to stay up all hours of the night fixing things as quickly as possible. We've also been able to improve the UI thanks to lots of great feedback.

As I write this we're on a plane to NY for the O'Reilly conference. We'll arrive in the hotel around 1am and have a short list of last minute fixes to work on before bed - that is, as long as there are no surprises in our inbox when we arrive!

We launch tomorrow. I already haven't slept much in the last few days and don't expect to again for a few more, until things settle down a bit. I'm bracing myself for the feedback - I'm confident there will be positive stuff, but as a fellow YC colleague told me, 'it takes 10 positive pieces of feedback to make up for that 1 bad one people leave.' Oh, and of course we hope the server doesn't crash and there aren't any devastating bugs :) This should be exciting.

This is our smaller banner with the tip this button

2008-02-09T19:52:00.000-08:00

time

2008-02-06T23:33:00.000-08:00

Well, we still have 27 minutes left, but it looks like launching the alpha will be one day behind schedule. We're really almost there though!

We need to get it out there asap so that there's time for people to test it and let us know what's broken... and to give us time to fix it.

I hope there's nothing to fix, because there's really no time for it - we already have a list a mile long of what else to fix after alpha-ing and before Monday, when we need to be launched.

Despite all this I'm feeling good. I remade all the button assets (had to do it 3 times, thank you photoshop and svn), the site is working, and it's looking good.

26 minutes to go!

alpha release scheduled for tomorrow, Feb 6

2008-02-05T15:58:00.000-08:00

Ivan is knocking bugs off the list left and right, (we're using fogbugz by the way, and it's great) and we're almost ready to make tipjoy live, and send out a notice that we're in alpha!

The tension is pretty high around here, but we're still giving ourselves a few moments for breaks - last night at 11pm we played a quick game of scrabble - Ivan bingoed with "aquired" and although it was misspelled, we let it slide. :)

Here's our itinerary for the next few days:
Alpha launch tomorrow, Feb 6 (happy 3 year wedding anniversary to us!)
Drive to LA on saturday
Fly on sunday to NYC
Attend the O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing conference (we're giving a 5 min lightning demo Monday night)
Meet with Fred Wilson at some point next week while in NY

about this blog

2008-02-05T15:55:00.000-08:00

Welcome! Tipjoy makes it easy for people to leave tips for things they love online, and easy for content owners to be rewarded for making the stuff people love. Usually, we're located just outside of Boston, MA. However for the last few months we've been in Mountain View, CA taking part in Y Combinator's winter 2008 funding cycle.

Our blog is temporarily being hosted on blogspot, but eventually we'll be back at: http://tipjoy.com/our2cents/