Tipjoy (YC W08) now allows payments via Twitter

http://tipjoys2cents.blogspot.com/2008/12/tip-via-twitter.html

by ivankirigin • 18 years ago

53 43 18 years ago

tipjoys2cents.blogspot.com

halo• 18 years ago

I'm sure this wasn't 'inspired' by twitpay.me at all, released and announced here 15 days ago (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=369568)

ivey6• 18 years ago

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so we at Twitpay are taking it as a compliment.

Herring• 18 years ago

With compliments like that, who needs insults?

alex_c• 18 years ago

Out of curiosity, how much money has Twitpay sent around so far? (not counting the founders, of course :p)

webwright2• 18 years ago

Which in turn, I'm sure wasn't inspired by this post here (June):

http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/6/how-twitter-will-be-worth...

Or maybe it came from one of the 1.2 million pages that has the phrase "twitter and payment" somewhere in it but no mention of twitpay:

http://www.google.com/search?q=twitter+payment+-twitpay

Or inspired by TextPayMe, which did the exact same thing with phone numbers instead of twitter usernames?

http://www.askdavetaylor.com/0-blog-pics/textpayme-welcome.p...

ivey6• 18 years ago

Actually, Nate's article (first link) was a direct inspiration for Twitpay.

mattmaroon4• 18 years ago

I would imagine a feature like this would take more than 15 days to go from concept to launch, though perhaps not. They are a startup.

ivankirigin10• 18 years ago

Actually it took just a few days of work and we've considered it for months

sarp• 18 years ago

Twitpay launched in 2 days during Startup Weekend in Atlanta

bdr• 18 years ago

I'm sure it wasn't. Knowing the tipjoy people, I'm sure they've been planning this feature for longer than 15 days. It's pretty obvious in their space.

callmeed• 18 years ago

Putting aside the sarcasm and assuming it was inspired by twitpay, what exactly is the problem with that?

Unless you also have a patented technology, being first to market doesn't really matter.

Execution matters. Bragging rights don't pay the bills.

ivey6• 18 years ago

No one from Twitpay is complaining. Ivan gave me a heads-up about this a few days ago.

TipJoy is a social platform for tipping people, that now has a Twitter hook.

Twitpay is a payments platform built exclusively on Twitter, with some other interesting features in the works.

It seems like overlap, but we're in pretty different spaces. I wish the discussion here had focused on TipJoy, and not veered off into this side of things...although I'm happy people know about Twitpay, too. We'll have our own HN threads for cool announcements soon enough.

Congrats to Ivan and Abby for getting this out there.

drusenko• 18 years ago

welcome to the real world. i can't tell you how many times people have taken UI and concepts we spent a ton of time developing and copied them directly, even some of our well funded competitors. even yahoo (they completely ripped off our theme choosing interface). hell, we've even had direct feature-for-feature copies of weebly commissioned in india. life's not fair, and neither is business.

coming up with an idea isn't going to get you ahead, it's your ability to keep coming up with good ideas, execute on them, and make the right choices that steer the company that will. and eventually, some day, you get a big pile of users that becomes increasingly hard to lose, even if you try to fuck it up (just look at geocities. yes, it's still the 124th biggest site on the internet...)

smahend• 18 years ago

"inspired" is probably not the right word. i think directly stolen from twitpay is probably better

calambrac• 18 years ago

"Stolen", really? It's business, not super friendly fun time. Competition happens.

ivankirigin10• 18 years ago

Tipjoy is all about super friendly fun time. Like at our poker nights. Come by if you're in the Boston area (and a startup hacker/foudner): http://www.meetup.com/Boston-Startup-Poker/

webwright2• 18 years ago

Yet another reason on the long list of why execution matters a helluva lot more than the idea, especially when it comes to easy/simple ideas.

I'm not convinced it was "stolen", and I think it's pretty crappy of you to suggest that it was unless you know something the rest of us don't.

TipJoy almost certainly has a product roadmap of some kind. Theoretically it's possible that they pushed what they were in the middle of aside 15 days ago to attack this and managed to get it done and launched by today... But I think it's just as likely that they were already working on it.

Even if they DID steal it from Twitpay, the idea certainly didn't originate there. http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/6/how-twitter-will-be-worth... (from June)

mattmaroon4• 18 years ago

Idk, the feature is definitely a little too obvious to call theft. Also, when you see someone launch 15 days after someone else, you can't assume copying. Features often take longer than that to develop, especially on sites that involve money transfers.

Not saying it's impossible, just saying it's far from a slam dunk.

sanjayparekh2• 18 years ago

Errr.. Twitpay was developed over a WEEKEND at Atlanta Startup Weekend. I'd say it's pretty easy to copy this idea in 15 days. Heck, I'd have expected more features. Maybe the extra days were used to do more key words.

mattmaroon4• 18 years ago

Nice feature. I would use this if I frequented Twitter. I have sick friends who would throw money around like that for fun though.

ivankirigin10• 18 years ago

You tweet sometimes. They're usually pretty funny, so you should do it more. I'm pretty sure twitter will be closer to an ecosystem of tips, considering everyone is a "blogger" - though some with greater followings.

mattmaroon4• 18 years ago

Yeah, I log in a few times a week, and read whatever posts are on the first page. That's about it.

juanpablo• 18 years ago

Too many "pay words"! I don't know if that's the case but you should really check they aren't part of a casual tweet.

Eg.

"I'm not going to pay @joe $1000 for an old ipod!" or

"Everyone! Give @bob $10 to buy beer".

ivankirigin10• 18 years ago

We thought of this. They need to be in the first 3 tokens.

So this would indeed count, "Give @bob $10 to buy beer" but that is clearly a closer to a command.

More importantly, this is an opt-in option, so it would be hard to do it without knowing.

ivankirigin10• 18 years ago

I'm really excited about this because of where we can go with this.

The idea of a "rtip" or tip/retweet is the biggest innovation here. It's exactly how twitter is already used to disperse information, but adds a social gesture with monetary weight. That's pretty powerful. If you like a tweet, just say "rtip $1 @username the awesome tweet".

Lots of sites use Twitter credentials, and this means they can initiate payments. It also makes those payments inherently social, as they are broadcasted - so in ways it is better than an OAuth system. But we're planning that too.

We are also accepted new signups via twitter credentials http://tipjoy.com/createaccount/platform/twitter/

We're going to open this up to an API, meaning sites based on twitter credentials can convert their whole user base to tipjoy users. I'm really looking forward to see what can be done with these tools.

omakase• 18 years ago

The potential for this idea is what got me excited the minute I saw your post.

As an aside, I think twitter still needs to release support for OAuth, there are too many sites out there storing twitter credentials in plain text right now. Careful developers should be hashing the passwords with some secret salt so at least their users passwords aren't at risk if someone ever gains access to their db.

These aren't really your issues, but twitter needs to add proper authentication. Anyways -- this is a great from tipjoy -- looking fwd to what comes next.

nostrademons• 18 years ago

This is pretty cool. Congrats, TipJoys!

bootload• 18 years ago

"... Tipjoy now allows payments via Twitter ..."

Go Abby & Ivan

Dilpil• 18 years ago

Am I the only one who is EXTREMELY skeptical that anyone is going to actually give out money using these applications?

Tipjoy (YC W08) now allows payments via Twitter

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