I came across an interesting service Tipjoy. to simplify the hard problem of co-ordinating a monetary transaction. Exchanging money is a very strong social signal. When we communicate with others we are exchanging only attention, other costs associated with communicating are almost zero. Internet and mobile technologies have made attention very scarce resource. I would argue that in some context it is more scarce than money. Attention scarcity is one of the challenges facing development of new Web 2.0 applications.
I think money, in the form of micro transactions, can be used to solve of this problem. By micro payments I mean in the order of few dollars or dimes. But coordinating human activities is very difficult, let alone exchanging money. So the cost of making a financial transaction is greater than transacted amount (a few cents dimes.)
It is not a very difficult problem. But I think it is a more rewarding problem to solve than doing information aggregation (news feeds), new messaging channel (Twitter), or similar tools which only steal more attention from us.
Go tipjoy, go, run like a wind….
Tagged: money "social transation"