Bitcoin Forum

Many doubters have said "bitcoin is good for nothing" and doesn't provide any useful value.  Well, here's a demonstration of useful value.

Those of you who know about American politics know the US Republican Primary season is in full swing. There is a candidate I support (Ron Paul), and there is a candidate I despise (Newt Gingrich).

It so happens that Ron Paul's campaign just put together an attack ad against Newt, slamming him for his hypocrisy. The ad is a bit too "propaganda" for my liking, but the message is true. So, I'm going to spread this video out to over 100,000 people via Twitter. Some portion of them will forward it to their friends, etc. But how will I do this? I'm just some dude up against the political and media elite of the world.

I can do this quick, cheap, and easily with Bitcoin.

Step 1) I use FeedZeBirds.com to create a campaign - this takes 30 seconds as I just sign in with my twitter account. No ID verification. No bank account. No lengthy forms of any kind. All made irrelevant by Bitcoin.

Step 2) I seed the campaign (I've chosen to send 2 btc). Money is approved after 6 confirmations - so an hour after the idea crosses my mind, the campaign is live.

Step 3) There isn't even a step 3

The campaign message is now available for Twitter users around the world to propagate my propaganda. and quickly toss  There is a public donation address on the campaign so people who ALSO support the idea can toss in a coin and keep it going. Many of the people who tweet the message will have it appear in Facebook, making it even more viral as those who support the cause can click the link and contribute - earning bitcoins themselves by retweeting or adding bitcoins to the fund.

See the campaign here: http://www.feedzebirds.com/a823 (http://www.feedzebirds.com/a823)
Donate funds here: 12cy9BBaLsjCoVT8GeVxhZdUi4r9dJ6JyX

Feel free to retweet it yourself if you're a Ron Paul fan, you'll earn .08 btc for every thousand follower you have, paid instantly (again, no forms to fill out, to waiting, no bank accounts, no ID info.)

The efficiency and smoothness afforded by Bitcoin is utterly revolutionary. This is just one small example of the new things Bitcoin allows in media and marketing. Imagine any PR, advertising, or charity campaign using this mechanism to distribute their message worldwide with almost zero barrier to entry. Imagine a Twitter campaign like this for the Japan relief efforts, or the Haiti earthquake fund after the destruction hit. How does a concerned man in Taiwan donate to a Haitian quickly and easily? Bitcoin changes everything.

UPDATE Dec 4: 
77 Tweets
35,152 Beaks Fed
68,955 Beaks Remaining (funds available)

Now we apply the same method to "Erik is a convicted felon". Are we trusting that people won't retweet things unless they believe in them, even when they're getting money for it?

Alas... a sign of a good invention is its applicable use for evil purposes  :'(

Fucking humanity, always screwing with birds.

"earn .08 btc for every thousand follower"

That seems like a super low rate for what would be some mass spamming depending on how many of the followers are real or bots or inactive, which also brings me to the other side of this, how easily someone could game this site depending on what preventative measures you have in place to stop that.    What is the rate http://sponsoredtweets.com/ goes with?  I couldn't find specific information on a quick once over.

I donated .788 BTC. You're the man, Evor.

Great questions, all. The rate is up to the person who creates the campaign and he must compete with other advertisers for the attention of Twitterers. If it's Nike and they want to blatantly promote shoes, they may need to pay a higher amount that the Red Cross promoting a charity. It's simply a market, so sponsors set the rate they're willing to pay, and Twitter users decide if that's enough to compensate them for sending the sponsored message to their audience.

Users that spam their own followers too often or with highly erroneous messages will tend to lose followers, and thus there's a feedback mechanism to discourage that naturally.

The site has a few anti-spam techniques for eliminating "bots" and similar accounts. They're reported to twitter and banned from the site. It's fairly easy to manually review accounts to see if they're bots, and there are automatic tools available also. There will always be some bots that exist there temporarily, and advertisers should take that into consideration when pricing their CPM numbers.

SponsoredTweets.com is, unfortunately for them, stuck in the pre-bitcoin world  ;)  They require a sign up process, and then certain users have to be approved and matched with certain sponsors. Rates are decided by the twitter user, so basically every sponsor needs to check each user and vet them and gauge them according to CPM figures individually. Would be a pain in the butt. They also focus on securing contracts with celebrity tweeters, whereas FeedZeBirds is accessible to anyone with any size account and they are paid proportionately automatically (and instantly with no fees anywhere in the world!)

I must say this is an awesome app. Great job evoorhees !

Thanks!! Ron Paul told me he really appreciates it  ;)

Try to get Ron Paul at BitCon if you aren't joking. : P

 ::)

This is a very exciting new thing!

Erik: It'd be nice to somehow be able to see how many beeks have already been fed for a specific campaign.

Another suggestion: Could you make the links in the listed tweets clickable?

Erik,
You forgot to mention that you could have done all of this anonymously!
That way,  if Newt is elected president,  he won't know who to toss in jail for starting all those tweets.

Awesome site!  Donation sent.  :)

Agreed, for normal ads it doesn't really matter, but for charity drives or PR campaigns it is relevant. Will add that!

So far the campaign has been tweeted to 12,207 people, with funds remaining for another 54,000. A few more bitcoins donated and we'll reach the 100,000  ;D

This is amazing. Great job!

This is exactly the way mass media works today.  They keep parroting the same lies because they know people will pay them (or their advertisers) to hear these things.

And perhaps that's why mass media is dying as an industry... moving to decentralized web media. People get sick of lies, and competition applies to mass media just as with everyone else. You can fool some people most of the time, or fool most people some of the time, but it's hard to fool all people all of the time =)

Hehehehe yes anonymous for all the tweeters, but Newt will come after me as the site owner for sure  ;)

can bitcoins somehow end up being lost in all this ?

tweet gets somewhere unwanted,
or receiver does't know what it is,
or just forgets about it, discards it, never collects and so on ?

Yes, which would be great. It would increase the value of Bitcoins for all of us.

These thoughts apply to every single marketing technique ever made.   Advertisements are a roll of a dice. 

Ehhh perhaps you aren't understanding the way it works =)  The Bitcoins are deposited by someone who creates the campaign. When users retweet the campaign, they're paid from those bitcoins based on the bitcoin address or email they've entered. If it's not a valid BTC address, the coins aren't sent. If it's the wrong email, coins will sit in BTCinch's system until they're claimed.

If a user sends btc to a new address or email and never does anything with them, then I suppose those coins are gone forever. But that doesn't hurt anyone except the person who forgot about them - all other coins become more scarce and thus more valuable in proportion.

aha, so messages are forwarded by people that want bitcoin,
say no more :)

GENIUS

UPDATE Dec 4: 

77 Tweets
35,152 Beaks Fed
68,955 Beaks Remaining (funds available)

This is just for the Newt video, and it's received 8 btc of donations to help perpetuate it.

If any of you have a message you'd like to promote, give it a try!

Not a bad idea.

This is a killer app and will help Bitcoin. Kudos. I'm still not into twitbook, but it will be interesting to see how many people copy this idea.