

Google Launches New Service - TipJar: a collection of money saving tips  - vaksel
http://moderator.appspot.com/#16/e=3cfc

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anuraggoel
The title, though factually correct, is quite misleading. It's like saying
Google launches interactive Python shell service at <http://shell.appspot.com>

The real service is Google Moderator: <http://moderator.appspot.com/>

TipJar is just a featured series on Google Moderator, just like the Shell is a
featured application on the App Engine. It looks like Google 'seeded'
Moderator with Tipjar, along with several other moderated discussions.

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thorax
Yeah, I'd like to see the title tweaked a bit to clarify that, too.

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patio11
I was thinking "Oh, its that Amazon Honor System (allowing people to make
donations to folks who put a button on their website, for example bloggers)
all over again", except no. Its a "One guy writes up a money saving tip, other
people vote it up".

Here's my tip: neither the technology nor the content is interesting.

Sample: _Pay your bills online to save on postage_ or _Take advantage of free
entertainment in your community – parks, museums, exhibits, etc. Go to free
park concerts and other community activities._

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fortes
Yup, it's definitely not winning any awards for insight. One of the current
top tips: "Bring your lunch to work once or twice a week instead of buying
it."

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ramit
I agree -- and my tips are up there (iwillteachyoutoberich). It's hard to say
anything useful in that small amount of space.

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jncraton
When I saw the title, I was afraid that this was a tipjoy competitor from
Google.

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ivankirigin
Same here. My heart skipped a beat.

Technically, Google Checkout is already a Tipjoy competitor. We worry about
Amazon much more than G.Checkout & PayPal.

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ajb
Yes, that's what I thought as well.

On the subject of tipjoy, a useful option would be to allow people to just
collect recipients that they are interested in giving to, and then split $10
or whatever between them at the end of the month. I think this would have two
advantages: reduce the effect of Clay Shirky's micropayment decision cost
problem, and allow people to budget more easily (which will make them less
scared of giving money).

(I was thinking of doing this until I heard of tipjoy, curse you :-).

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ivankirigin
I've used our bookmarklet which sets the price at $0.25
<http://tipjoy.com/bookmarklet>

You'll find even if you use it a lot (3 times daily?), you won't get that much
over $10 or $20 a month.

But I do agree such a setup would be pretty cool. We're building out some
other tools, but this is a good idea, if done right.

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ajb
Another idea - I don't know how difficult this would be - would be to have
some way for websites to give freebies to people who have tipped more than,
say $5 in total _to anyone_ that month. The website owners would get two
benefits: people would be more likely to tip them, and they would get more
traffic (because you would provide an 'if you liked this...' feature to sites
who did that). This interacts well with the 'split $X at the end of the month'
feature, because tippers would then round up in order to get the freebies.

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josefresco
The only issues I see here is that most tips are pretty decent. So a simple
yes/no doesn't suffice. I'd like to see some sort of rating system (1-5).
Unless they are relying on new content bubbling up and then being replaced by
even newer tips ala HN.

