Having Fun With @tipU

in #steemit7 years ago

Three days ago I sent 250 SBD to @tipU because it seemed like a really fun, easy way to surprise someone with an extra bit of support, even with low voting power. I like keeping my voting power around 80%, but that hasn't happened in a while as it's more often falling below 60%.

If you haven't yet heard of @tipU, consider this your introduction!


(source)

@tipU is a fun and somewhat addictive way you can send SBD to people simply by writing tip! X where X is the amount of SBD you want to send. First you have to deposit some SBD.

That's then kept in an account for you, which you can withdraw at any time. There are various supported commands such as checking your balance:

Maybe I've been a little too active with it, but I'm having so much fun! I've been tipping 5 SBD on average, with a few larger ones as well.

I gave 20 SBD to help a little with some funeral expenses, tipped some art I liked, a post about women in crypto, a 20 SBD tip to a post I knew would get flagged for speaking the truth, some more art I liked, and 50 SBD to a heart-breaking story of a single mother with sick kids who will soon be homeless (and no, before you ask, it's not a scam; this person was vouched for by members of the community).

One of the most fun was a tip for some photography I enjoyed which resulted in this reply:

One tip turns into the nicest thing that's happened to them on Steemit in 2 months!

Clearly we need more of this!

So if you want to get started, check out their latest post:

@tipU Guide #3 - checking your Balance, setting Default Tip and other @tipU Commands

To be clear, I don't know @cardboard personally so if they decide to be a bad actor and steal everyone's money, don't blame me. From what I've seen so far, this seems to be a legit service which is really helpful to the community. What I can say for sure is I've had a lot of fun with it so far.

Now, some advice:

@tipU allows you to set a link so that when it replies to the person you're tipping to let them know you sent them a tip, it will include a link to a post you choose. That's pretty neat, but my fear is if a lot of people start using this service, it will start to look like spam all over the place. "Hey, look, I just gave you some meaningless tip of $0.02, but now you have a link to my post. Come visit, PLZ?" No one wants to see the comments on their posts filled up with stuff like that.

My suggestion:

Use the hide feature. Just send your tip with tip! X hide. That will still send the tip just fine, and if they read your reply, they'll see the tip command so you'll get the social credit you unconsciously desire, but more importantly, it won't fill up the comments section with @tipU's reply.

At the same time, spreading awareness about this cool little tool is important for those who want to spread some SBD love around and enjoy the process. If they don't know about it, they can't use it. The default reply by @tipU is a nice little advertisement for the service, and I've already been told by one person they found it due to a tip I left:

Thanks @lukestokes for the 'tip off' on that interesting Africa post. Not sure if I doing this correctly so this is just a test.

So using hide (especially this early in the life of this service) is just a soft suggestion if this thing starts to take off. Let's keep the spam down while having fun.

I hope you enjoyed this post. If you do start using @tipU because you found out about it here, please let me know! I'd love to hear your experiences with it.

Again, shout out to @cardboard for making something fun and to @felixxx for providing the inspiration as mentioned in the @tipU introduction post.


Luke Stokes is a father, husband, business owner, programmer, and voluntaryist who wants to help create a world we all want to live in. Visit UnderstandingBlockchainFreedom.com

I'm a Witness! Please vote for @lukestokes.mhth

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Thanks for sharing! I didn't know about this service. Seems like a good one)

UPVOTED.
very good.
I would be happy if you like to follow me and give your opinion about my posts.
Thanks.

Hmmm. Why not just tip people yourself? Why do we need a service like this for tipping people? I mean if you wanna tip someone, why not just do it yourself. Am I missing something here?

Try it yourself and see.

There's a lot of psychology behind the importance of making something easy such as donating, tipping, or purchasing something. Humans have to overcome loss aversion which is really powerful. If you have to copy someone's name, go to your wallet, paste in their name, select an amount you want to send, login with your active key, double check the amount and the username, and then click send... well, all those extra steps decreases how much will be tipped. also, you now have to find your place again in the list of posts you were reading!

This isn't just my opinion, as I do think it's supported by evidence. By lowering the barrier so much, it makes it quite effortless. They've done similar studies relating to paying with cash verses paying with a credit card verses paying with something you just wave over the receiver. People spend more when it's easy. Same thing applies here.

Ah. Fair enough. I didn't notice you can trigger the tip with just a comment. I thought all the commands work with memos and transfers.

Hi there! I only wanted to mention that also the issue for me is loading wallet - I have so many transactions that it freezes my webbrowser for few seconds. I hope that steemit devs will change it so the wallet only loads your last transactions, just like comments and replies section. Cheers!

Yeah @poloniex has the same issue. I hope they fix this because it's ridiculously slow for people with a busy wallet! All the best with your app :]

Thanks and be careful with poloniex: www.reddit.com/r/poloniexforum

Sure! I'm not trading with them anymore. I lost my faith in them when they kept my deposit for 3 weeks and allowed me access to it after its value was down more than 50%!

Great post @lukestokes You can suggest to watch "The pain of paying" from professor Dan Ariely from Duke. It is just shows clearly how psicology plays with our minds when we are paying one way or another.

Mmmm interesting. This is the second time I have heard someone with good rep talking about @tipU. This is very interesting and i think i may have to take it for a test drive. I like giving randowhales and this may be another way I can tip out. Thanks for showing me the hide option too because i totally see what you mean about the spam part.... cheers mate

Hah! That may be my first randowhale upvote. Thanks, mate. :)

Thank you for Luke for writing about this which I just discovered today thanks to @cardboard using it! I am going to try it too.

This is cool. I am in the process of saving up money for a gaming PC. Its really depressing that I cannot play all the newest games because I can't afford to buy a new PC

This is jus an amazing system to get more people connection, to make us relate the other, and spend time reading an article, more than asking for an upvote. Im planing to make a post about how to increase, or how to make better real readers, helping each other tu introduce steemians to other steemians, with the same tastes and likes, I'd love to add this tip system just to give as a gift or price for a great article, with more value than an upvote. Im gonna keep reading about it.

There are some great steem apps here - steembuddy is a good one to find people and connect with them on similar interests :)

Thank you, Luke!
I read about tipU before, but - as always - it helps if someone shares their first hand experience with using it.

You're such a good dude. I'll have to play around with it and spread some love myself.

I think it's a great idea, thank you for supporting so many in this ingenious way.

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