

The Real Deal about Jonathans Card - creativityhurts
https://www.facebook.com/notes/jonathans-card/the-real-deal/174391689299156

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Pheter
Could someone please explain to me why this is such a big deal?

Let us assume that Jonathan is deceiving us and that this is a marketing
ploy... what does it matter? We haven't been conned into spending our time or
money on anything. The card still works in the same way.

Now, if Jonathan is telling the truth then it sucks for him to be treated in
this way. It seems to me that there is nothing to lose by believing him.

Sure, it sucks to be misled and I'm sure it hurts some people's pride to think
that they are prone to being tricked but ultimately we don't lose anything!

For me it comes down to a nice example of how generous some people can be. And
if Starbucks are actually the ones topping up the card then yay, free coffee!

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danso
It's not that big of a deal. I wish he would just say whether or not his
company has a relationship with Starbucks, and if it does, why he made such a
strong claim of no-affiliation-whatsoever to Starbucks on his project page?

Here's a screenshot of the cached clients page: <http://i.imgur.com/PgccX.png>

Nothing wrong with free coffee, or sponsored free coffee. And not that much
wrong about doing a hobby project that relates to a professional client. But
appearing to hide evidence of that relationship seems to be what has caught
people's interest:

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danso
FWIW, Mobuqity has made a statement to TechCrunch
[http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/10/the-vast-starbucks-
conspira...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/10/the-vast-starbucks-conspiracy-
jonathans-card-wasnt-faked/)

>Mobiquity has no professional affiliation with Starbucks. As a young company
launched this past March, Mobiquity had initially included on its website the
logos of companies with whom members of our team had worked with in the past,
as we stated on the page. Mobiquity took down the l page in late July as part
of an ongoing site redesign – complete coincidence, not conspiracy. Jonathan
Stark was not the Mobiquity team member who had previously worked with
Starbucks. But he does admit to liking their coffee. If you read Jonathan’s
original post on the subject on July 14th, you’ll see he was as surprised as
anyone else that his experiment in “broadcasting money” (by taking a
screenshot of his Starbucks card barcode via his iPhone and emailing it to
himself to use on his Nexus S) was successful. Jonathan’s exact quote was, “I
bought a coffee with a picture.”

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pnathan
The Jonathan's Card story really demonstrates something that I've been
increasingly aware of:

On the Internet, it's very easy to wear a tin-foil hat _and_ persuade others
to do so.

 _Why_ does every other thing have to be a conspiracy?

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sebkomianos
I share your and Pheter's take on the "issue" but an answer to your question
can be that it makes people believe they are smarter.

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corin_
A remarkably empty statement. I already didn't think it was a marketing ploy,
but if I did then reading this sure as hell wouldn't have changed my mind.

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michael_dorfman
Really? What more would you have liked him to have said?

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robryan
Clear up his professional associations with Starbucks.

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potatolicious
> _"The Jonathan's Card experiment was completely my idea, Starbucks had
> absolutely nothing to do with it, and until recently, I was scared to death
> that Starbucks might sue the crap out of me."_

What part of that is unclear?

Believe or disbelieve him, but the statement is unambiguous.

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praptak
The accusations were specific - he works for a company that provides mobile
solutions for Starbucks. They pulled their clients page from the web after
this blew up. I'd expect something along the lines "I'm not the Jonathan Stark
who works for Mobiquity" or "I'm him, but the idea was still solely mine and
my employer pulled the clients page for reasons totally unrelated to the whole
affair".

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praptak
Update: Mobiquity has spoken up and said it was indeed a coincidence.

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civild
That's all well and good, but removing their Clients page and the Google cache
of it is pretty damning. Why cover your tracks if it was all above board?

I don't think it really matters in this case whether it was sincere or not,
but I guess people don't like to feel like they've been played.

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magicseth
It could simply be Starbucks didn't want to be associated with the project, or
they never gave Mobiquity permission to use their name as an endorsement. This
stunt could have caused them to notice.

And this could still be the case while a marketing team at Starbucks has
decided that this card is a great tool that they can sink a couple thousand
dollars into slowly to get people in to Starbucks.

Like you say, it is pretty tempting to assume the worst because nobody wants
to be the last person to know they've been duped.

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creativityhurts
TechCrunch also wrote a piece on this coffee conspiracy thing
[http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/10/the-vast-starbucks-
conspira...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/10/the-vast-starbucks-conspiracy-
jonathans-card-wasnt-faked/)

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djtumolo
The comment thread under that looks super fishy as well. All positive
comments, on the internet? Yeah right. And most of them are well written?
Maybe my bs detector is set too high, but I smell shenanigans.

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dannyr
It's a Facebook note. Only his friends can leave comments.

