I have a Tipjoy account, but I doubt I'll ever use it unless you add the following functionality: Charge me five bucks a month, and then let me choose however many sites I want for that money to be divided up among. The problem with the micropayment concept is the cognitive load is through the roof. Deciding whether to spend money on something is stressful, and Tipjoy asks me to make that decision every time I go to a webpage.
Figuring out if a webpage is worth tipping is like going to the store and trying to figure out which toothpaste is the best. It's stressful as hell because they all look the same and you're afraid if you buy the wrong one you're teeth are going to fall out. Except instead of having to do that every three months, Tipjoy asks me to do it every couple of minutes. Even if you're only tipping a quarter the cognitive load is just as bad as if it's a much larger amount. In many ways it's worse because you know the people you're tipping are only getting a quarter for the mental effort; the end result just doesn't justify the process. So just let me contribute as big a pie as I want, and then make hitting the tip button just cut out an extra slice from the pie. It completely eliminates the stress of having to figure out whether or not to spend money, and the cognitive load goes down a lot as well because you can, for example, favorite Fred Wilson's blog once and then a slice of the pie automatically goes to him each month. And speaking of, Crest solved this problem by just releasing their new Pro Health product, the one that costs an extra couple bucks but just does everything. Which of course is the toothpaste I now buy. Tipjoy has to figure out a way to do the equivalent. Because as is, Tipjoy makes being nice feel like pulling teeth.
But I think there is very much a place for in-the-moment support. It's such a good feeling to get some excellent content online. I actually love tipping.
I'm eager to get that same feeling when I listen to music. It's exactly when you're listening to favorite song of yours that you want to give back. That's downright sexy compared with buying music on itunes.
Good deal. Once you add that functionality you should get websites to offer the user plums in exchange for giving them a slice of the pie. Sites like K5 and Fark and Slashdot already offer plums-for-money, so if you could make it easier for more sites to do this it would seem to be quite viral.
Edit: I think the idea of donating in real time would be most rewarding satisficers. The problem is that early adopters, almost by definition, are rarely satisficers.
Charge me five bucks a month, and then let me choose however many sites I want for that money to be divided up among.
Now that actually could work, great idea. It makes tipping "free", since you have already committed to handing out x per month. Also gets you guaranteed income for Tipjoy, since there will always by 3% of $5 per user every month.
Figuring out if a webpage is worth tipping is like going to the store and trying to figure out which toothpaste is the best. It's stressful as hell because they all look the same and you're afraid if you buy the wrong one you're teeth are going to fall out. Except instead of having to do that every three months, Tipjoy asks me to do it every couple of minutes. Even if you're only tipping a quarter the cognitive load is just as bad as if it's a much larger amount. In many ways it's worse because you know the people you're tipping are only getting a quarter for the mental effort; the end result just doesn't justify the process. So just let me contribute as big a pie as I want, and then make hitting the tip button just cut out an extra slice from the pie. It completely eliminates the stress of having to figure out whether or not to spend money, and the cognitive load goes down a lot as well because you can, for example, favorite Fred Wilson's blog once and then a slice of the pie automatically goes to him each month. And speaking of, Crest solved this problem by just releasing their new Pro Health product, the one that costs an extra couple bucks but just does everything. Which of course is the toothpaste I now buy. Tipjoy has to figure out a way to do the equivalent. Because as is, Tipjoy makes being nice feel like pulling teeth.