Jonathan's Card

http://jonathanstark.com/card/

by ams1 • 15 years ago

726 219 15 years ago

jonathanstark.com

ben1040• 15 years ago

This reminds me of the drive-through "pay-it-forward" chains that spontaneously appear from time to time:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2004084452_w...

notJim• 15 years ago

There's no money on the card? http://jonathanstark.com/card/api/latest

jonknee• 15 years ago

There's $46.88 now, it fluctuates a lot.

pangram• 15 years ago

Whenever I go through a toll bridge, I frequently pay the toll of the person behind me. I've sometimes wondered if it propagates backward at all. For the Starbucks card, I would love to live in a society where this could work. Unfortunately it's one of those things where one anonymous bad egg will ruin (i.e., drain the account) for everyone else. Some way to restrict it to a community with less anonymity would help (i.e., go to a web site, auth through hacker news, and then you get the image -- then it is tied to your HN identity).

jessevondoom• 15 years ago

For a more practical membership-share or coffee-club type of set up restrictions make sense...but in this case I think the anonymity of it all is the interesting part — seeing the behavior patterns emerge naturally and anonymously will be very telling.

jarin2• 15 years ago

I've always seen karma as more of a net effect than a mystical thing.

In practical terms, paying the toll of the person behind you may not directly propagate to tolls being paid. However, the recipients are going to be just that much happier or less stressed out, and are likely going to pass that mood along to the people they interact with in some way.

It may only make a small, localized part of the world a tiny fraction of a percent better, but it adds up.

I think it was Steven Covey who wrote somewhere about the trim tab on a giant ship's rudder. It's expensive/hard to build a motor that can turn the rudders on a giant container ship directly while it's in motion, but all it takes is a little mini-flap on the edge of the giant rudder.

snprbob86• 15 years ago

> I frequently pay the toll of the person behind me

In what country/state/city? Is that legal? In most (all?) US cities, it is illegal to fill other peoples' parking meters because that robs the city of fines. But maybe it's not a concern for tolls?

> I've sometimes wondered if it propagates backward at all.

At most, it would only reach exactly the car behind you. If that driver decides to pay the toll anyway (or the attendant secretly pockets the additional payment), the extra payment would be surely be swallowed.

CrazedGeek• 15 years ago

    In most (all?) US cities, it is illegal to fill other peoples' parking meters

Is that true? A quick search brings up http://theexpiredmeter.com/2009/04/parking-ticket-geek-arres... , which suggests that, at the very least, it's legal in Chicago.

makmanalp• 15 years ago

Whoa. That's odd. I think it should be illegal for the government to rely / depend on illegal behavior to make money. Otherwise, it seems like a conflict of interest in that there is no incentive to tackle the root cause of crime anymore.

lurker192• 15 years ago

Don't be silly.

Refilling a meter to circumvent the time limit or cover up a violation is illegal in some jurisdictions.

Paying someone else's bill is not illegal.

wisty• 15 years ago

Some company in the Gold Coast (originally it was the city council, but they stopped, so someone else took up the slack) hires gold-bikini clad girls (called "Meter Maids") to put money into parking meters that are just about to expire. And leave an ad on your windshield. But then, it's a tourist city.

_285ng• 15 years ago

My wife works at a Starbucks with a drive-thru and says that the chain reaction frequently persists until the line is emptied; the longest such chain was around twenty cars.

jonathanstark15• 15 years ago

Jonathan here:

Thanks for your input, and perhaps for paying my bridge toll ;)

You wrote:

"Unfortunately it's one of those things where one anonymous bad egg will ruin it for everyone else. Some way to restrict it to a community with less anonymity would help."

I see where you're coming from, but I believe that A) nobody (with the possible exception of Starbucks) can ruin this, and B) the solution to the bad egg problem is to be more open, not more controlling.

Stay tuned... j

useflyer• 15 years ago

this is completely amazing and a great proof of concept -- there is so much that could be built on top of this

pshc• 15 years ago

A while ago I was toying with the idea of making a BitCoin<->SBUX automated exchanger for fun, since card transactions are free and could be automated relatively easily. Never did get around to it. Also, there's a rather large scammy underside to BitCoin that would probably arbitrage the hell out of it.

pnathan• 15 years ago

Arbitrage with BitCoin? Surely you joke!

apaprocki2• 15 years ago

Interesting experiment in that the image is public with no signup/restriction to get at it. You would need to have a continuous stream of new "pay-it-forward" users to add money on the card, no? There are lots of coffee drinkers in the world... Wasn't there something in the news not too long ago about an investment firm that ran this way? :)

rflrob• 15 years ago

> Wasn't there something in the news not too long ago about an investment firm that ran this way? :)

Only if there's also a continuous stream of people who are drinking without paying. If, out of a sense of community responsibility, people pay in close to what they drink (or a little bit more), then this system works.

apaprocki2• 15 years ago

Yes, but that is kind of what posting the image without a barrier to entry kind of guarantees, no? I guess that is the 'experiment'.. It would be more interesting if there were two cards, one public, one restricted to HN members or some other subset of 'public'.

BlackJack• 15 years ago

The balance just went from $0 to $40 - awful nice of whoever did it. I'm a big fan of this idea - put in $5 and you can help out someone who you've probably never met!

startupfounder12• 15 years ago

what about buying a coffee and then loading the exact amount back on the card?

brk• 15 years ago

Seems to kind of defeat the point?

Use it when you can't afford coffee, refill it when you can afford a coffee plus a little more...

canistr• 15 years ago

And in case anyone was wondering the first balance he tweeted was:

jonathanscard

I got $7.91 left on me.

18 Jul

dustyreagan• 15 years ago

This is a really cool experiment. Coffee seems like the perfect use case since it's awkward to exploit, in that you're not going to buy $100 worth of coffee, just because the card has $100 on it. But what about other physical goods, like Barnes & Nobles, HEB, Home Depot?

redthrowaway• 15 years ago

Well, you could buy a $100 starbucks card, which would break things. Someone already spent $30: http://twitter.com/#!/jonathanscard/status/10029778012327526...

Sam_Odio2• 15 years ago

That was me. One latte plus $25 worth of food for two homeless guys outside. Turns out they didn't want any of it. I think I might've insulted them by bringing them food that they hadn't asked for. :/

rdl• 15 years ago

It would be really fun to combine this kind of point of sale reward with games or puzzles or tasks, sort of like mechanical Turk combined with OKCupid or wufoo.

Cash prizes are less interesting for this kind of thing. (various studies)

angryasian2• 15 years ago

>Cash prizes are less interesting for this kind of thing.

I've read the same, but I don't believe it. For example people will say that fame is more important than money, but I would argue fame leads to more work, or more free stuff which in turn leads to money or more money than a set cash incentive. Or the case where people do things for points, but when those points are redeemable for physical items or discounts again this leads right back to some sort of cash savings. I think it always go back to some sort of monetary incentive.

JohnLBevan5• 15 years ago

I read in a recent Wired UK article that some banks have opted to pay a sum of money to a charity of their employee's choice, rather than paying the employee a full bonus - the idea being they've found this to be a better motivator for employees. Though admittedly it's also good publicity for the banks running such schemes.

coverband• 15 years ago

Such a simple and wonderful idea; it brightened my Sunday. (Edit: I wonder how soon it will take SBX to decide that this is a vulnerability in their mobile app and change something that will break this.)

dvdhsu2• 15 years ago

It really doesn't seem that much of a "vulnerability" actually. The only way to get a picture is if you get ahold of the victim's phone, or they willingly give it up to you.

If you get ahold of the victim's phone, the victim has bigger problems (NFC, e-mail, saved passwords, etc.).

tedunangst• 15 years ago

All you need is a high-res picture of the victim's phone. Take a picture of them paying, use the same barcode yourself.

dvdhsu2• 15 years ago

As somebody else mentioned, it's unfortunate that one bad person could ruin it for everybody else.

Is it possible to restrict the card only to coffee (to prevent huge catering orders)?

michaelschade6• 15 years ago

I don't believe you can, since Starbucks lets you use your card for any purchase. That said, even if you could, why restrict it? He mentions that the point of this is to be "an experiment in social sharing of physical goods", so making it something purely built on trust makes the experiment exciting and worthy. If someone does abuse it, then that's just a data point in the experiment; but, if it continues to be replenished, that's a neat observation and a certain +1 for human nature.

benatkin• 15 years ago

Looks like a bad apple or two has helped take the over $50 that was on it an hour or so ago down to $0. I don't see a normal pattern of withdrawing small amounts of money for coffee, that's for sure.

rmc• 15 years ago

It's possible someone could abuse it. It will be interesting experimental data to see if this happens, how often it happens, and how much it happens.

michaelschade6• 15 years ago

Although the bit about paying it forward and social sharing is a great idea on its own, I think I'm a tad more excited that he actually made an API for this. That's seriously awesome.

hassanhassan4• 15 years ago

awesome initiative! I always loved the pay it forward concept.

P.S. does anyone want to call this guy Lord Starkbucks?

Now I know where Jon Snow ends up.

ookblah• 15 years ago

Hmm, I think posting the value of the card affects the data points. I understand why it needs to be done, but my thinking is that if nobody knows how much is on there it leaves it less prone to outright abuse.

If the card suddenly gets a $100 recharge I'm sure it will be abused a lot more. Maybe that's part of the experiment, but I'd like to see what people do in general without that knowledge.

EDIT: or maybe even just a "this card has more than <insert cost of minimum item>" so that people know it can be used, but not how many times.

jonathanstark15• 15 years ago

Jonathan here:

I've been thinking about this quite a bit. One the one hand, last week some jerk saw a $50 balance and spent the whole thing in one shot.

On the other hand, people need to know when there is money on the card if they are thinking about walking down to a sbux to get a coffee.

I might try the "there's more than $10 on the card right now". I've also experimented with delaying the reloaded messages, and doling out the money more directly by asking who wants a coffee.

Folks who respond get the update if they're quick. We'll see what happens, but I believe that there is a sustainable way to handle it.

Cheers! j

startupfounder12• 15 years ago

How about putting everything in units of coffee? "There is at least 1 coffee on me" etc. "5 coffees were just added to me". This might take the emphasis off the amount of money on the card and onto the giving and receiving of coffee.

olefoo2• 15 years ago

What about requiring interaction from purchaser.

Require a photo of the purchase.

It would add a level of social obligation. You could go further and require a tweet explaining the purchase. You could even add a little homily about good manners and not being greedy to the explanatory text.

I think you are doing a very interesting experiment with new financial entities, and I'm curious to see where this leads.

JonathanStanton• 15 years ago

Out of curiosity, every 15 coffees people buy, does Starbucks send you a coupon for a free drink in the mail?

mrpollo• 15 years ago

Perhaps keeping things simple, just a message that says "the card has balance", "no balance in the card", that way we can reduce the abuse

codeslush• 15 years ago

As of the time of this post, ~8:10PM Pacific, "jerk" has been used a total of 6 times in this thread - 5 of which are owned by you! ;-) I write this because this particular comment, for me, sends a negative vibe about you. By no means am I trying to question your intentions or character, but a different choice of word would go a long way.

Now, for the reason I actually wrote the comment: This should be expected behavior. It's quite possible that "jerk" actually needs the help more than the person who gets the one coffee. It's equally viable to assume s/he is simply taking advantage of the system. In the bigger picture, I think these dynamics are completely expected. Would you call the guy that gives $50 or $100 a jerk as well? Either way, it's an experiment, and I wouldn't expect it, given a proper sampling, to deviate much from what we see in society as a whole.

Best wishes - and great idea!

gabrielroth4• 15 years ago

I'm kind of playing devil's advocate here and kind of not: How can you justify spending $n to buy coffee for someone with a smartphone instead of donating $n to someone with fewer resources and greater needs?

div• 15 years ago

The same way you justify spending $n on any luxury product you don't really need.

startupfounder12• 15 years ago

just loaded $50 on the card, bought 10+ coffees for tech caffeine addicts, got a sweet tweet because I am looking for a tech co-founder for my funded cleantech startup. thinking outside of the box for recruiting... just saying. Oh, and if anyone is interested in joining wa.tt email me, james@wa.tt

jonathanstark15• 15 years ago

Jonathan here:

Fair point. My goal is to figure out the dynamics of social giving in this fashion and create a similar sustainable model around items that are less "luxury" than coffee.

For example, I can imaging people paying for other people's groceries or medicine in a similar manner. Maybe I'm crazy, but it seems worth trying.

Best, j

Cushman4• 15 years ago

I don't go to Starbucks, but I just loaded up $10 because I'd really like to see this "succeed", whatever that means. It's gone already, so I guess the experiment is working? :P

gabrielroth4• 15 years ago

Thanks for the response. My question wasn't really directed at you—I can see all kinds of ways you could justify the project, including just curiosity. My question was for the people who are putting money on the card.

I hope one of your other ideas works! Good luck! But I suspect a big part of the impetus behind the contributions is a feeling of reciprocity, which is a different impulse from charity.

Daniel14• 15 years ago

You could say that about almost anything. "How can you justify commenting on HN, when the money earned in the equivalent amount of time wasted here could save n Nigerians from starvation?" You can't, not really. But Jonathan's card still is one of the more ethical ways of spending money, so I'm all for it.

gabrielroth4• 15 years ago

I comment on HN because I enjoy it. But I suspect that some people add money to Jonathan's Card because it gives them a feeling of virtue. I'd like to interfere with that feeling.

potatolicious• 15 years ago

Taking that logic to its natural end - I should be living a meager existence, eating and buying only what is necessary for my own continued survival, and donating any surplus to people who don't even have subsistence level living standards (and there are a lot of said people).

But do I really need to explain why that is undesirable, or why most people in the world don't do this?

gabrielroth4• 15 years ago

Well, smart people have made that argument (http://www.amazon.com/Life-You-Can-Save-Poverty/dp/140006710...) but it's not the argument I'm making.

wallflower2• 15 years ago

I know it is a fictional movie but if you haven't seen it, "Pay it Forward" is a movie that might make you briefly think about your impact.

SoftwareMaven• 15 years ago

But stop watching 15 minutes before the end. The end of the movie totally countered everything they were trying to say in the rest of movie, IMO.

angryasian2• 15 years ago

interesting experiment, but all it takes is one troll to ruin the whole thing.

dave1619• 15 years ago

It would be cool if you could see who paid for your coffee and also who had spent the money, and let them communicate.

startupfounder12• 15 years ago

Dave, just did that. Looking for a co-founder for my cleantech startup who likes coffee... very important... Jonathan gave me a sweet shoutout.

jonathanstark15• 15 years ago

Jonathan here:

I totally agree. The sbux site and card don't support this directly, but I think I have a way to achieve this manually that involves requesting a coffee before you can know how much is on the card. We'll see!

Thanks, j

wallflower2• 15 years ago

> Plus, it’s actually kinda fun to see those rewards stars drop into my in-app coffee cup.

Well, Jonathan may get the Rewards so it is not completely altruistic.

A real-time map of where transactions have been made ala http://twittervision.com might be interesting if this card goes viral

https://www.starbucks.com/card/rewards

jonathanstark15• 15 years ago

Jonathan here:

Yes, unfortunately I do get the rewards. I get a free coffee for every 15 purchased. I figured that the free coffees would accrue to the card itself and therefore every 16th person would get a free coffee. As it turns out, sbux mails free coffee coupons to me:

http://yfrog.com/keup3hxj

I'm not sure how to redistribute them fairly, but I was thinking that I could at least pass them out at my local store. However, doing so is expressly forbidden and my name is on the postcards.

Thoughts? j

jason_slack• 15 years ago

Keep the coupons? Seriously. I mean, you set this up, you have funded it, etc.

Also, Maybe a good idea to ensure auto-reload is not setup on the card! I dont know that it is, but if it is you could be out a significant amount of money. Looking at your API calls I dont see where it has been auto-reloaded.

This is a neat idea.

mkorfmann5• 15 years ago

Think of them as a reward for the work you put into this project. You deserve it.

jerf• 15 years ago

If you're willing to throw the dice a bit, and you wouldn't consider this a tainting factor (no sarcasm), contact Starbucks. There's a distinct possibility they may work with you. Depending on how you judge the risk, you may want to do this anyhow, lest they simply shut the card down entirely in the near future. There is of course the risk that contacting them may cause that result sooner, but... in the long term you're probably better off contacting them anyhow because if they're going to shut it down when you bring it to their attention, they're going to shut it down when they discover it anyhow. I think you still come out ahead in the case where you contact them and they end up not shutting it down when they would have if you didn't contact them.

Otherwise, you're "stuck"; be open about it (as you are), and use them or not. I wouldn't hold it against you either way, personally.

duck• 15 years ago

Buy a homeless person a coffee this winter and have a chat with them.

rodh2573• 15 years ago

Use them to buy your own coffees and whenever you do, add the value of the coffee to the card?

kaiyu• 15 years ago

A fair way to distribute them would be send them to those that chose to donate to the fund?

lucianof4• 15 years ago

I tried to load it, but all I got was: "This recipient does not accept payments from non-U.S. PayPal accounts." (I'm Swiss) Why would Starbucks restrict from where they get their money?

mkorfmann5• 15 years ago

Paying with CC from outside the US works.

lucianof4• 15 years ago

Hm, I didn't feel like giving *$ my email. But now that I tried it it says: "Please select a state or province." (I cant find anything in this list that is not US/Can) and "Please enter a ZIP Code at least 5 characters long" (we just have 4 digits). They just don't want my money..

stringbot2• 15 years ago

And Starbucks shuts this down in 5... 4... 3... 2...

scrrr• 15 years ago

Why should they?

kristofferR• 15 years ago

Because he gets a lot of free coffee rebates.

stringbot2• 15 years ago

I don't think they _should_, I just think they _will_. Really, what international megachain wants people doing "social experiments" with their customer-loyalty infrastructure?

michaelschade6• 15 years ago

I've created a Haskell implementation of his API: http://rawr.mschade.me/jonathanscard/

The page on Rawr includes a basic usage example as well as links to my implementation on GitHub and Hackage.

EmielMols• 15 years ago

So, anybody set up the Auto-Reload yet ;-)?

danielodio11• 15 years ago

@Socialize just loaded $100 on the card: http://twitter.com/#!/Socialize/status/100347389134643200

Here's the conf: http://drod.io/2R3o0I2a3R3n3S2L1J2N

funthree7• 15 years ago

You deserve upvotes (and I upvoted you) but someone just nabbed that entire $100 off the card within a few moments of it being there...

dmn0014• 15 years ago

It looks like someone has figured out how to empty the card, in 2 minutes: https://twitter.com/#!/jonathanscard/status/1003474991889776...

danielodio11• 15 years ago

I heard that! Looks like Jonathan's social experiment is clashing w/ eBay's "people are good" philosophy... either that or there are a LOT of thirsty people all at the same time.

Regardless, I'm glad we tried it; anyone have any theories of how it's being hacked?

hassanhassan4• 15 years ago

That's awesome! I wonder if more companies will jump on this for the goodwill. A bummer about the $100 being emptied in minutes though.

funthree7• 15 years ago

Potentially abusive use shown in these tweets.

http://twitter.com/#!/jonathanscard/status/10034749918897766...

http://twitter.com/#!/jonathanscard/status/10034674284272844...

http://twitter.com/#!/jonathanscard/status/10034195955777536...

Edit: Any ideas?

Edit: It just happened again...

http://twitter.com/#!/jonathanscard/status/10035604975584460...

Edit: More...

http://twitter.com/#!/jonathanscard/status/10036286052539596...

http://twitter.com/#!/jonathanscard/status/10036486417377689...

http://twitter.com/#!/jonathanscard/status/10036536246547660...

hassanhassan4• 15 years ago

Something does sound fishy. I wonder why someone would ruin the fun for everyone involved.

JohnLBevan5• 15 years ago

$100 spent on coffee for the homeless maybe? Just to take an optimistic view on the data.

jonathanstark15• 15 years ago

Jonathan here:

The beauty of this is that one person can't ruin the fun for everyone involved. Call me a hopeless romantic, but I think people who don't get the concept are in the minority. Their behavior will be overrun 100x by people who do get the concept.

We'll see what happens soon enough... j

eggbrain2• 15 years ago

You can't transfer funds onto another card if you do not own the card / have the CSC code.

funthree7• 15 years ago

Aha, you are right. I will edit that. Any ideas?

emeltzer• 15 years ago

The twitter feed updates once per minute, so if the $100 is spent by a bunch of people w/in that period of time, it will just show -$100. Should be checkable by Jonathan?

eggbrain2• 15 years ago

Things like this are just apt for abuse. While in real life when this happens, we get a small connection with the person (they live near me / they also were getting coffee), on the internet, people only see a free gift card that automatically refills itself, and not the people that paid for it. When you are playing with other peoples money, it's hard to be frugal.

Sam_Odio2• 15 years ago

It looks like things have died down. The steady state seems to be one where the balance is low and the transactions are small: http://dpaste.com/589113/.

That would imply that the card is currently being used as intended.

startupfounder12• 15 years ago

Looks like it only gets abused when there is a high balance that people can see on the twitter feed. A solution is to focus on coffee not money. "at least one coffee is available" or "buy someone a coffee, no coffee available" or "someone gave the gift of a coffee". Oh, FYI free coffee refills after purchase in shore.

modoc• 15 years ago

Except by you stealing from it....

hammock• 15 years ago

I'm trying to figure out- what's the difference between loading the card and just dropping $10 on the ground?

gregschlom• 15 years ago

Nobody is going to drop back 20 bucks after they found the $10 bill.

jonathanstark15• 15 years ago

Please try both and share your findings with the group.

etha• 15 years ago

- It's hard to drop ten dollars cash on the other side of the country.

- You don't need a smartphone to use ten dollars you found on the ground.

- Cash can be spent somewhere other than Starbucks.

- There's no twitter account broadcasting the amount of money dropped on the ground.

- If you find money on the ground, chances are not good that it was dropped by someone from HN.

- If you tweet about money you found on the ground, you are just a jerk.

sjs• 15 years ago

The experiment started on Twitter where a smaller group was initially involved (but sadly not this canuck). It was more of a take a coffee, leave a coffee thing between friends. Fun to watch.

Posting it to HN should bring interesting results. There's still money on it at the moment.

Eliezer2• 15 years ago

When I get small amounts of change, like a nickel, I often leave them on nearby ledges or fences or mailboxes or any object I can find. It's not so much altruism, as making life more like a video game where you can find small amounts of money by searching random objects.

hugh33• 15 years ago

If I drop ten dollars on the ground, the person who finds it doesn't know they've been the recipient of someone else's generosity (rather than someone else's clumsiness) and hence they're less likely to pass that generosity on.

danielodio11• 15 years ago

OK I just tried a test: @Socialize put $49 on the card -- let's see if a smaller amount still tips off the hacker: http://drod.io/2E071F3T0C0V0G1w0f39

danielodio11• 15 years ago

the $49 is on there! Someone go buy a latte, quick! http://drod.io/3F0U1n340W1c0H1H0F29

Klondike• 15 years ago

That $49 sparked my walk over to Starbucks on the corner to buy one. (I put $10 on the card last night myself, hadn't used any.) By the time I was halfway there it was gone, and I decided to just buy it anyway, hoping it'd gotten filled but the feed hadn't updated yet -- and the barista gave it to me for free, unprovoked. I didn't even have to present the card.

danielodio11• 15 years ago

OK I'm going to go nuclear to determine if this is some automated script or a manual hack: @Socialize just put $300 (!!!) on the card (remember... this is to promote the SDK Speed Challenge... so maybe click the link so I can claim some kind of ROI! http://go.GetSocialize.com/SDK-Challenge)

I figure if it's a script, the $300 will disappear instantly. But if it's manual, it's unlikely that someone could manually xfer that at a Starbucks counter w/o getting questioned.

Confirmations (max was $100 at a time):

http://drod.io/0G391o170o1e1V0Y400H http://drod.io/1t362M3B1a0t421I1Q0b http://drod.io/2O1R052m0g0q1g1P1x1V

jonathanstark15• 15 years ago

Jonathan here:

The card was not hacked. Looks more like you're just trying to promote your link. Thanks though.

Cheers! j

danielodio11• 15 years ago

Jonathan, re: not hacked -- do you think people are really spending exactly $45 at Starbucks in one shot?

funthree7• 15 years ago

Do you mind releasing the transaction data available? The card went from $100 to $0 within moments a number of times.

danielodio11• 15 years ago

@jonathanstark someone is totally hacking your card: http://twitter.com/#!/jonathanscard/status/10036286052539596...

rglover2• 15 years ago

Standing in line waiting for my drink. Cool experiment. Going to put the cash back when I get home.

rglover2• 15 years ago

Follow-up, going to add money now but learning why for the modest bunch, this is genius. I spent a bout $5.50 USD to get a drink for my girlfriend and I. When I go to the Starbucks reload a card site, I have to put at least $10.00 USD on the card. What's more is this made me really think about the idea of Google Wallet and any other phone-based credit card apps. In theory, I could take a screenshot of anyone's card and just mail it to myself. Does anyone know if there's plans to randomize barcodes/symbols to prevent things like this? This really just brightened up my Sunday evening.

jt2190• 15 years ago

"Jonathan's Card is an experiment in social sharing of physical goods using digital currency on mobile phones."

What, exactly, is the hypothesis? While this _seems_ cool, I really don't understand what he's setting out to prove, that we don't already know: This will work until the number of people who abuse it grows to a certain point, after which everyone will loose faith, and nobody will contribute more funds.

[Ha. I just noticed the posts describing how this is being hacked.]

danielodio11• 15 years ago

$5,000 for @jonathanscard ... why not! http://twitter.com/#!/Socialize/status/100375061587951616

grandalf• 15 years ago

It worked! Thanks for the iced Americano and pastry!

startupfounder12• 15 years ago

I think you might be the only person who has given thanks verbally back to the community... good on ya!

connor• 15 years ago

I agree, photos, names, or some proof of humanity of the people behind the karma would help to stem abuse. The internet almost makes this abuse of karma easier due to the anonymity. You just don't feel as bad.

Qa8BBatwHxK8Pu• 15 years ago

US only?

russjhammond• 15 years ago

Here is a heat map of the location of @ mentions for @jonathanscard, which for the most part is the location of those that have added funds to the card.

http://www.myheatmap.com/maps/b2Pqu0EGSgs=

corroded• 15 years ago

this is such a good thing and i hate to see this go to waste when some capitalist bastard starts selling coffees for half the price using the card.

jonb• 15 years ago

I contributed in order to get people telling my wife (http://twitter.com/#!/raintea) Happy Birthday tomorrow (8/8).

Thought I'd cross-post here for the cause too :)

brianleb2• 15 years ago

This reminds me of something that happened when I was just a bit younger... My girlfriend and I were graduating from pharmacy school and she was applying for residency positions (yes, they have those for pharmacists). Well, she found out she got the one she really wanted and so that night we went out to a nice dinner to celebrate. We did it up like you would expect a happy couple to - nice bottle of wine, share an appetizer and dessert, etc. We were still living on loans at the time and so in my head I was keeping track of about how much the meal was going to run me at the end of the night (for better or worse - keep in mind we were in college at the time). We had easily cleared a hundred bucks (quite the meal for college students who usually eat $7 sandwiches or more likely cook for themselves!), and when it was time for the bill, our waitress told us "The couple that was sitting over there paid for it."

You wanna talk about made our day? Try made our week. We had seen the older couple earlier, but we didn't know them, and they were gone by the time we got our bill. We couldn't even thank them, and we were just so... shocked. Since then, whenever we go out for a nice meal, I look for a young couple who looks happy and in love, just waiting to return that favor.

C.S. Lewis described altruism in one of his apologist books as a "good infection" - kindness that spreads uncontrollably. I can't do anything but agree.

jonathanstark15• 15 years ago

Jonathan here:

Thank you so much for sharing your story – it really made my day. "Kindness that spreads uncontrollably" perfectly sums up my highest hopes for this experiment.

Best, j

manojlds2• 15 years ago

Difference being there could be a time when I couldn't afford a hundred dollar dinner and then time when I can afford it. But a cup of coffee, not really sure if there will be times when I can afford and not afford it.

rakkhi• 15 years ago

Great story. Will do the same going forward.

js2• 15 years ago

There are so many little things you can do that can make someone else's day. Here's another one: cook a meal for any new parents you may happen to know. Nothing fancy, just something you can drop off that they can easily reheat and maybe lasts a couple days.

mikeleeorg• 15 years ago

I once crossed the Bay Bridge from Oakland to San Francisco and when I hit the pay toll, the attendent told me the driver in front had paid for me. This has happened more than once.

So every once in a while, I'll do the same for a driver behind me - especially if they were generous enough to have let me merge into their lane (but usually, just as a random kind gesture).

Good infections rock.

YetAnotherAlias3• 15 years ago

I have heard similar restaurant stories happen to some of my friends. Jonathan's card is also a good idea.

However, I can't help wondering that with all this technology we are ending up in a situation where the Haves help the Haves and they all feel better for a little while. What can we do to make it easy to help the really needy? Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could just as easily drop $10 to help someone eat a few meals a day? I am aware of all the real world problems and constraints, but I hope these examples inspire some of HN community to build stuff that will help those that really need it.

laurenkuhlman• 15 years ago

Text MEALS to 90999 to give $5 to the Chicago Food Depository. I do it quite frequently when some joyous happenstance comes my way or when I spend a bit too much on myself.

hugh33• 15 years ago

The good thing about random altruism, i.e. giving stuff to people regardless of whether they need it or not, is that it doesn't encourage welfare dependency.

When you give free stuff to "those in need", you have to be extremely careful not to just wind up changing the balance of incentives in a way that just encourages them to stay "in need". Otherwise you're harming them, not helping them.

Eliezer2• 15 years ago

http://xkcd.com/871/

and

http://lesswrong.com/lw/6z/purchase_fuzzies_and_utilons_sepa...

This is an efficient way of buying fuzzies, for a really cheap price, and it's important to buy fuzzies or you start to fade. If you want to buy utilons, find a maximally effective charity (this means you either check Givewell or pick your favorite existential risk reduction org) and donate more than $10. Do not confuse the two problems, and do not attempt to solve them both at the same time!

iqster• 15 years ago

Good karma!

Back in the days of pay phones, I had a friend who'd put quarters in the return slot. While it is a very small gesture, it moved me. Felt like sharing this.

jyap• 15 years ago

I put in $11. Part of it was to download my iOS app Canon Lens Buddy (http://bit.ly/pe2KFS) as part of Advertising/social experiment.

The credits lasted 10 minutes before used up. Should be interesting to see if this results in any downloads.

Proof of top up: http://twitpic.com/62shre

projectionist• 15 years ago

Reminds me of cafe in Japan where you order for person who comes after you and you eat what was ordered by person before you http://www.cabel.name/2009/09/kashiwa-mystery-cafe.html

artursapek• 15 years ago

I hope Starbucks' system can handle the amount of activity this thing is eventually going to get! You're picking up a lot of steam.

robryan• 15 years ago

I don't really like how this is playing out, seems every time the card gets a decent amount of funds it gets takes in 1 lump sum. As people have said I think the buy a gift card thing ruins it, socially I don't think people would run up $100 purchase in one go unless they aren't buying coffee/ food.

If people donating to it's money is all going to a couple of people working the system for their own gain it doesn't really motivate people to give to it.

Udo• 15 years ago

At this point it's clear that the card can be abused as there are people who for some reason think it's cool to suck the balance completely dry.

However, a company like Starbucks could set something up that is very similar to Jonathan's experiment but with a reduced abuse potential: just introduce a card with a limit per transaction. For example, if you could only charge 6 USD per purchase to the card, it would make life difficult for the cheaters.

david927• 15 years ago

There's a cafe under the castle in Prague where for a decade or more, patrons can buy an extra coffee for someone else. A physical cup goes up on a line above the counter. Others, usually students, will come in, see the cups, and ask for the free coffee. A Czech architecture student told me she never paid for a coffee -- just took one from those donated. When I would visit the cafe, I would make sure to add another cup or two to the line.

Jonathan's Card didn't seems to work, and it makes me think (unsurprisingly) that what works at local levels as this cafe in Prague, can't work in the Extremistan that is the entire global community.

We're so used to all the benefits of this new, suddenly-made-close world: play poker with a guy in Singapore one moment, buy an antique off an old woman in Portugal the next, without moving anything but the mouse; that we forget the beauty and function that the local still provides.

joshmlewis• 15 years ago

I used to work at Chick-fil=A before I started working for a startup and we would get people that would start paying for the people behind them in the drive thru and the next car would pull up and we'd say: Hey you had a...(whatever they had)..and the car behind you has already taken care of it. They would look shocked, smile, and say well we will get the car behind us. And this would go on for 10 or more cars.

It was really awesome. We also had people come through and ask for food for a homeless guy that sits on the off ramp on our interstate exit, and Chick-fil-A would give them food to take to the homeless guy and I'm sure many more situations occur all across the country that make peoples lives better. I think there is a thread of hope in humanity.

johnzimmerman• 15 years ago

I love this idea.

aoberoi• 15 years ago

just made a basic visualization of the data on the balances endpoint. http://aoberoi.me/jonathans-card/

I'm thinking about what types of interesting questions we can answer by visualizing the data. If anyone wants to contribute to that effort, fork me on github (https://github.com/aoberoi/jonathans-card) and send me a pull request, i'll update the site.

chandraonline• 15 years ago

This is a great experiment. I just added some money to the card. I wonder to prevent abuse, if perhaps you should use two cards , one for people to give to (A) and the other to use at starbucks (B). You can transfer from (A) to (B), when the balance of (B) goes below a certain amount say $15 so that one person can't abuse the card by taking away all the existing balance.

warrantsuspect• 15 years ago

You can check the balance here http://www.talkaboutdesign.com/starbucks/

realsociable• 15 years ago

Karma Behaviorism: Does It Pay Off? http://bit.ly/nMPtFV

samspot• 15 years ago

I think it is wonderful that many are generously giving others free coffee.

But... how many of them really believe in karma?

Jonathan's Card

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