
Show HN: Expensive Chat – Pay one cent per letter - keesj
https://expensive.chat
======
have_faith
Reminds me of that 1000x1000 ad site from the 90's where you could buy an ad
based on how many pixels you purchased. Allow someone to pay to set the chat
room topic, the colour scheme, etc. Maybe some Rich instagram kids will throw
some cash at it for bragging rights.

~~~
lathiat
The page is still up :-)
[http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/](http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/)

History:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Million_Dollar_Homepage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Million_Dollar_Homepage)

~~~
PUSH_AX
The ads also still get traffic, A while back I wrote a script to list all the
domains that had expired and bought one at random for shits and giggles. GA
reported about 100 uniques per month.

~~~
michaelmcmillan
Hilarious! I just scraped all the domains and did nslookups on all of them to
see which where expired. Then I registered the one with the largest area
(milliondollarconnect.com occupied 1000 pixels) at x1, y1 = 710, 750 (the ad
that looks like a glassy oval). Will report back on traffic.

------
eps
This looked oddly similar to
[https://highscore.money](https://highscore.money) and... it’s the same guy,
Marc.

For what it’s worth, we had one of top ten spots on the highscore.money, got
some traffic from it (and still get a trickle), but all of them were immediate
bounces. Caveat emptor.

------
cbhl
I'm reminded how, last year, at work, they changed the length limits on
performance reviews from characters to words. They found that character limits
resulted in men having more room to express themselves than women -- "she" is
longer than "he"; "girl" is longer than "guy", and "female" is longer than
"male".

Twitter also has interesting per-country dynamics because it uses a character
limit. In Chinese or Japanese, 140 characters can express more words than in
English.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
^ I also find it culturally interesting that basically every female descriptor
I can think of is more characters than the male counterpart.

~~~
jMyles
That's because most of them are modifiers "wo"-men, "fe"-male, etc. Which
really is pretty demeaning if you think about it.

Over the years, there have been efforts in feminist and academic circles to
introduce alternate spellings that are not derived this way. [0]

0: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Womyn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Womyn)

~~~
ultraluminous
Genuine question and not some MRA trolling, but how is that demeaning? How
would the etymology of English pronouns would be demeaning to anyone?

~~~
deckar01
The etymology of "woman" is very demeaning. It literally means "wife of man"
or "servant".

[https://www.etymonline.com/word/woman](https://www.etymonline.com/word/woman)

~~~
dragonwriter
> The etymology of "woman" is very demeaning. It literally means "wife of man"
> or "servant".

Your own source disagrees with you; while it does say that it came from a word
formed from “wif” plus “man”, “wif” didn't mean what “wife” means now but what
”woman” means now, and “man” meant what “person” means now (which is among the
current meanings of “man”, too.)

The literal meaning of the compound is “woman person”. It's true that the
compound “wifman” was used both for “woman” and “female servant”, but it's
worth noting that the modern English word “man” includes among its meanings
(and has for centuries) both “male person” and “male servant” (the latter
being most commonly used preceded by a possessive indicating _whose_ male
servant is being referred to), so that the old “wifman” was a pretty exact
equivalent of the modern “man” ignoring the (semantic, not grammatical) gender
neutral senses of the latter.

------
stakhanov
It's such an obvious idea, and it has been around for as long as spam e-mail
has been a problem. I absolutely do not understand why it has not yet been
adopted for all e-mail traffic worldwide. If an e-mail were to cost just one
cent, it would never add up to an amount that a normal person would even
notice, yet it would solve the problem of spam e-mail over night.

~~~
lighttower
This was one of the motivators described in the original Bitcoin white paper

~~~
myself248
And Hashcash, 12 years before that.

------
keesj
Hi all. About 2.5 years ago I created Highscore Money. I was looking at pay-
to-play games and wondered what would happen if you'd take it to the extreme.
The result was just a leaderboard you'd pay your way into. Whatever you pay,
that's your score.

Today, I'm launching a new social experiment. A chatroom where you pay for
every message you send. Normally chatrooms can get messy quick, because
there's no cost to sending a message. Expensive Chat changes this dynamic.

~~~
jstanley
What makes this a social experiment rather than a simple cash grab? Are you
donating all the money to a charity?

~~~
baby
Are you shaming HN users for trying to monetize something?

~~~
Yetanfou
That question is comparable to the type of question which is often used in
politics to silence opponents. In that sense it _should_ be against HN rules,
as to whether it is I don't know.

As far as I'm concerned he just asked a question which can be answered without
the need for 'defenders' to show up and challenge the questioner - and with
that stifle the discourse here.

~~~
vinceguidry
The same logic applies to the question you're replying to. Were it me that was
asked the question, I'd simply say "no, I was just curious."

------
pbhjpbhj
Hmm, don't think I'm giving a random site (that breaches EU online business
laws: must have an irl address for service) my CC info.

If you spend 1¢ on posting ":smiley:" every day, won't that cost him about 20¢
transaction costs? Eventual DoS by CC transaction costs??

Love the spirit of it on an intellectual level though.

~~~
wgx
It's using Stripe for payment, so this site never sees your CC info.

~~~
amingilani
Yes, but the costs are still the same. Even stripe has a 2.9% + 30¢ cost per
transaction.

~~~
zaarn
Better write something worth the money then.

~~~
tjbiddle
Stripe doesn't bill the end-user these fees. In many US states, it would be
illegal to do such as well.

------
gelo
I just broke this website sending this: " ｓｅｎｄｉｎｇ ｕｎｉｃｏｄｅ ｃｈａｒａｃｔｅｒｓ ｆｏｒ ｆｕｎ "

~~~
elcomet
where did you find those characters?

~~~
bovermyer
Try this: [https://beautifuldingbats.com/hey-howd-you-do-
that/](https://beautifuldingbats.com/hey-howd-you-do-that/)

------
ratsimihah
The implementation is clean AF and the idea is super fun! Really neat job
there! This probably won't take off as-is but I feel like there's untapped
potential to be leveraged.

~~~
fouc
The creator is the same guy that made wip.chat & betalist. I wouldn't be
surprised if he keeps building on it and it succeeds.

~~~
ratsimihah
Of course it is! What an inspiring community.

------
thenanyu
Interesting language effects at play. There’s a message in there: “你好吗?” Which
is priced at 4c

The equivalent message in English “how are you?” Is 10c

~~~
carlmr
We can make it more fair by pricing UTF-8 bytes.

你好吗 = 9 bytes

how are you = 11 bytes

~~~
gruez
not really. according to
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8) and
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Roadmap_to_Unicode_BMP.sv...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Roadmap_to_Unicode_BMP.svg),
any codepoint bigger 0x80 (second half of the first box) is 2 byte per
character, and codepoint bigger than 0x800 (anything past the 8th box) is 3
bytes charater. so while it might be fair for CJK languages, it's even less
fair for languages that don't mostly use the latin alphabet.

~~~
carlmr
That's true, considering the name of the website they would have the privilege
of an even more expensive chat.

------
alexgmcm
It reminds me of writing SMS messages - using all the awful txt spk to use as
few characters as possible and save money.

~~~
the_duke
Not just to save space.

Typing with T9 was much more time-consuming that our autocomplete touch
keyboards.

~~~
porsager
Are you sure you're not thinking of multi-tap on a keypad and not T9?

Once you've learned T9 (the one where you tap a key a single time for each
letter in the word and a lookup is made based on the combination). You can
surely be faster than Qwerty.

This was also the reason I developed
[https://typenineapp.com](https://typenineapp.com) [1] for iPhone once they
allowed custom keyboards.

I am on average 20wpm faster (50wpm for english, 60wpm for my native language
danish) with Type Nine on my iPhone compared to the apple qwerty keyboard.

Even though you don't have the tactile feedback of the previous T9 phones on
the iPhone I can type without looking just the same way as on a phone with a
physical keyboard.

[1] More on my thoughts here - [https://medium.com/porsager/a-better-iphone-
typing-experienc...](https://medium.com/porsager/a-better-iphone-typing-
experience-77c6da52131)

~~~
karate-fu
This perpetuated myth has annoyed me greatly. Somehow, very few people
actually know how a T9 keyboard actually works.

In fact, T9 is one of the last few reasons why I only VERY recently got myself
an iPhone. T9 is superior in almost every way to a full touch-based QWERTY
when writing texts.

So, great idea and product, mate. This is a buy from me.

------
peter303
Such compression tricks were also used save money on costly telegraph
messages. The telegraph was arguably the first internet device, tying the
world together at lightspeed. But wires were expensive and messages
consequently so. A standard ten word message cost a workers average day wage.
So people used abbreviation tricks seen in texting and twitter. And companies
had code word dictionaries where a single word might mean a whole sentence.
This saved cost and disquised messages.

In the early days messages were limited by the number of wires, the speed of
human operators at both ends and electrical degradation of long wires. 20 bits
per second was a good speed. Physicists like Faraday and Maxwell figured out
how to lessen degradation. Inventors like Thomas Edison figured out how to
multiplex multiple signals on the same wire. And how transmit messages at
superhuman speeds with tape players and recorders at both ends.

~~~
myself248
Those codes are still in use.

73 OM TNX

------
mcnichol
I love that people are already working around the model by embedding part of
the message in the username.

That took all of three messages...

------
C4stor
The cheer fact that people actually payed to use it is boggling my mind. I
suppose the conclusion is that I need to work a lot more to even start
understanding how people think !

------
aur09
It looks like you're using stripe to process your payments. Does this mean
that if I send a 1-character message it will cost you money?

~~~
mariopt
I have the same feeling. With only 300 bucks we can make this guy lose 10K :D

( $10.000 / ( 0.3 + ( 0.029 * 0.01$ ) ) * 0.01 = $333,01

We would need a javascript script that would make 33301 payments of 1 cent.

This would be a very cost efficient attack between business rivals.

~~~
skrebbel
Are you a business rival to Expensive Chat?

~~~
mariopt
No but I might be a rich asshole with too much free time :D

~~~
martin_a
"Some men just want to watch the world burn."

------
raphinou
I'm curious, is it needed to generate an invoice for every payment received?
How is the accounting managed?

~~~
anyzen
Interesting question! I would assume that some invoice must be generated, but
it can be in electronic form (e-mail). Getting this right internationally is
still a major problem as far as I'm aware, but would love to know if there is
a (cheap enough) service that solves it...

------
amelius
I want people to pay per letter they email me ...

"Hey it looks like you want to send Amelius an email. Please visit this page,
where you can pay and make sure your email actually arrives"

------
vbo
Are you able to process payments as low as 1c and if so, aren't fees exceeding
the amount charged?

~~~
bayesian_horse
That screams blockchain, doesn't it? ;-)

~~~
supermatt
Does it? I thought even bitcoin had transaction fees.

~~~
bayesian_horse
It was a joke.

But you can use cryptocurrencies/blockchains to send messages, and you would
use the proof of work to make sure the price is paid.

~~~
smt88
You can use messaging software to send messages and CC transactions to make
sure the price is paid. Crypto/blockchain adds nothing to this scenario and
creates headaches.

------
iamasuperuser
This could make for an interesting idea for 'Quora for mentors', whereby
someone pays money (maybe more than 1c) to ask a specific question to a
'business leader'.

~~~
smt88
Various companies have been doing this for a while (and it's a business model
that existed long before the internet).

This is the one I know best and have used:
[https://clarity.fm/](https://clarity.fm/)

It was great a few years ago for validation for a B2B product we wanted to
sell and needed unbiased feedback on.

~~~
ksahin
"It was great a few years ago for validation..." It isn't good anymore?

~~~
smt88
I don’t know, as I haven’t had a reason to use it.

------
foreigner
It's interesting that this favours pictographic languages. You can express a
lot more in a few "characters" of Chinese than you can in English! Might be a
little more fair if you charged per byte instead of per character, but they
would still have a big advantage.

I suppose the same kind of thing applies to the character limit on Twitter.

~~~
kabwj
Yes. If I remember correctly when Twitter rose the character limit to 280, it
was kept to 140 for tweets in CJK languages.

------
thatguyagain
One thought: you should let the user know that you are using Stripe(?),
instead of a random credit card form. Cool thing!

~~~
keesj
added! thanks for suggestion

------
miki123211
what about making something similar, but where the cost formula is an^2? a
should be some constant factor like a tenth of a cent and n should be the
number of chars, i.e. per message or in the last 24 hrs. If Twitter worked
that way instead of an arbitrary 140/280 char limit, it would be so much
cleaner.

------
sandis
Seems it has been taken down? Now it only returns three dots.

~~~
keesj
Server went down. Up now :)

------
wongarsu
This reminds me of Twitch, where many streamers have it set up so that you can
get a message displayed or even automatically read out on stream if you
accompany it with a donation. Of course there it is in addition to a regular
free chat and more often used to get the streamer's attention

------
bitt
This sounds really fun! It is one of those ideas that when you first hear it
doesn't make a lot of sense. I'm not sure how it will handle transaction costs
though. It might be better to allow a minimum of $1 to be added in credits and
use that to charge for letters.

------
yami
Lightning network, where are you?

------
zyx321
Sounds like something that would make sense to implement on top of Twitch
chat. You already have a payment infrastructure tgat allows attaching
arbitrary amounts of money to each message, as well as a baseline reading for
either free or sub-only($5/month) chat.

Of course you'd need to do it in cooperation with an established Twitch
partner. Can't just create a new channel and start charging.

------
ZachWick
Looks like telegraph commercial codes are poised and ready to make a comeback!
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_code_(communication...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_code_\(communications\)))

------
gerardes
MrBeast just enter the chat. ;)

------
ajuc
Nice :) We were just talking about something like this several days ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19253464](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19253464)

------
baby
I created something similar but with a smart contract:
[https://davidwong.fr/FiveMedium/#/](https://davidwong.fr/FiveMedium/#/)

------
vortico
Is there a micropayment service he could have used, to avoid micropayments
showing up on a bank statement? Do any such services event exist?

Is this PCI compliant, since CC numbers are typed on his page?

~~~
smt88
Apparently it uses Stripe, and as long as the dev isn't trying to
intercept/store payment info (e.g. in logs), Stripe handles PCI compliance

------
bambax
"letter" seems ambiguous? I thought it meant "message" but it means
"character". I'm not a native English speaker though so maybe it's just me.

~~~
thejohnconway
I can see why that might seem ambiguous, but I've never heard anyone refer to
an electronic message as a "letter". A letter is always in physical form.

"Character" has its own ambiguities (am _I_ a character in this chat room?)

------
cm2012
I posted a few comments but they didn't show up. Oh well.

~~~
alexandercrohde
same

------
codeulike
No new messages for 45 mins, tried to chat, doesn't work.

------
La_Beffa
Hihihi this is fun and brilliant ! Had the chance to see it working for a few
minutes. It doesn't seem to work now, just a blank page. Hello javascript :(

------
fxfan
I feel like if a long message I typed doesn't even get wrapped - I'm not
getting what I paid for and hence am entitled to a refund.

Plus some damages for my lost time

~~~
keesj
good luck with that

------
leowoo91
That'd make a nice cyberpunk billboard in 10 years.

------
chb
"Spend money to chat with strangers who spend money to chat with strangers."
That's a demographic that doesn't deserve my time.

------
bob_theslob646
Am I supposed to be impressed? This makes no sense whatsoever. The reminds me
of that card game that raised money to dig a hole.

~~~
balfirevic
> The reminds me of that card game that raised money to dig a hole.

Honestly, that's quite a compliment.

------
momania
... still cheaper than a Slack subscription.

------
Kinnard
BitChat: [https://bitchat.bitdb.network](https://bitchat.bitdb.network)

------
Krasnol
I just get an "application error"

------
mipmap04
Need to add font enhancement features. Can I pay 2 cents per letter to have
the letters animated in fire?

------
benbristow
Seems to have gotten a hug of death showing a standard Rails error.

"We're sorry, but something went wrong."

------
marsrover
It's dead

------
WMCRUN
I’m curious,how are they processing the micropayments? Wouldn’t transaction
fees crush them?

------
twodave
Really strange, typically I'd expect you to have to pay to read, not to be
heard.

~~~
smt88
There's a long history of paying to be heard: advertising.

~~~
twodave
I hope it was obvious that I was speaking in the context of consuming a
service. Why is pedantry so rampant on this site?

------
keyle
I shouldn't but I love the UI of this thing. It's fresh and bold.

------
ian0
drawo.sh obviously wins. Not just because they paid the most. Because its the
first ad ive clicked on in ages that gave me exactly what I expected it to.
And asked for nothing.

------
gspetr
The TLD choice is a missed opportunity. With that idea they should have at
least used the ".rich"

More info: [https://www.nic.rich/](https://www.nic.rich/)

Jokes aside, this business model is not going to see any kind of wide
adoption.

------
iagooar
Business idea: corporate email system that offers a limited amount of emails
per month, and once the limit gets hit, discounts money from employee's
salary.

Add a formula that makes it exponentially more expensive if you add more
people to CC.

Problem with corporate mailing hell solved.

~~~
puranjay
That would just mean employees would make every email like 1,000 words long

~~~
iagooar
Well, that would be a clear win, because you would reduce the amount of
distraction.

------
Tepix
You need to make clickable URLs more expensive!

------
r32a_
should have used Lightning Network

------
Jenz
To be frank, I don’t get it

------
odiroot
Can I use hanzi though?

------
another-dave
Looks nice & seems like a fun experiment but can't help thinking that — at
scale, this becomes Twitter, where the average person has relatively short
messages like now, but Donald Trump gets an unlimited character count…

------
mlevental
what ui kit is this?

~~~
keesj
I custom designed it.

