

Ask HN: Please review Twollars - eisokant

Dear HN Members,<p>I've been here on HN for almost a year now and time and time again I see the most valuable comments come by on Ask HN Review posts. To be honest, they are by far my favorites.<p>I am very happy to now be posting my own. Last month my co-founder and I launched Twollars. Twollars is a Twitter thank you currency. Simply by tweeting "Give 5 Twollars @username" - there is no registration - you can send Twollars to someone. (You can also use any of the other commands - here is a list on our Wiki with all the commands we are experimenting with: http://thinktank.twollars.com/wiki/71163)<p>Where we hope to do a lot of good is by allowing people to donate their Twollars to a charity. The charity in turn is sponsored by a company who pledges to donate the real amount in hard currency.<p>We are also very close to launching multi-currencies. Which will allow anyone on Twitter to start their own currency. The thoughts behind this are to allow people to setup their own community currency (similar to many open money concepts that are being tried).<p>URL: http://Twollars.com<p>Any feedback is really appreciated!<p>Thank you so much,<p>Eiso &#38; Mac
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SingAlong
Eiso,

Twollars is a cool idea. How do you bridge the thing? Real money vs Twollar
money. I mean, do you actually donate money when someone donates money? or is
it just a service where you allow others collect donations?

P.S: I've been noticing you've been using using Twollars a lot yourself. Did
you launch it from a cafe? I think I saw a pic of you in a green shirt and a
laptop :) I've been spying on Twollars for a while LOL :)

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eisokant
Hey Akash,

The way it works is that companies who are interested in donation money to a
charity and getting visibility on Twitter can chose to sponsor a charity. So
then if for example a 1000 Twollars are donated, the company sponsoring the
charity will donate a $1000 Dollars.

Yup, I had launched it from a netbook in a hotel lobby/restaurant in London
since I was traveling at the time and we really wanted to get it out there
(someone posted a Twitpic of that). It was a great experience and got to meet
up with some great people via Twitter. One guy even found a problem in the
code and averted disaster.

All the best,

Eiso

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Angostura
OK, so the actual transaction here, isn't Twitter users donating to the
charity, it's Twitter users donating publicity to a company which is donating
to charity - correct?

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Tichy
Cool - I recently thought about the same thing, when I wondered what happened
to "kudos". Hope it works out for you - the idea with the charities is great!

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michaelfidler
Eiso mentioned you but I never made the connection. It's a great idea! I work
with a few charities who are looking to leverage social media to help them
through these tough times. I need to talk with one of you about this more. BTW
I know I don't comment here often, but I read you posts regularly and share
your link's as well. Congrats, I have a feeling this is going to take off.

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eisokant
Sounds great! Just drop me a mail at eiso@twollars.com

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michaelfidler
I will in a couple of days. I would love to be able to mention it at their
next meeting. I'll fill you in with all the details! BTW, I love this blog

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vaksel
whats stopping the Charity-Water to make a fake twitter account and do Give
1000000 Twollars @username.

Also, you need to give an incentive for the businesses to use this, instead of
sending the $$$ directly. For that you'll need to build up your core group of
users, and then tweet stuff like "IBM has donated $15,000USD to _____ Charity
thanks to your efforts"

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eisokant
Every Twitter account has a starting balance of 50 Twollars. So if you would
tweet that - you would get a message saying you don't have sufficient balance.

The incentive for the businesses is exactly what you're mentioning - the
visibility on Twitter.

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chiffonade
You're using the @ symbol incorrectly.

