Idea for the killer bitcoin app

[advertisingbit]

Oh this idea is awesome. Are you guys serious about a bounty? I'd love to give it a go.

I like the idea of it being 'internets' where 1 internet = 1mBTC, so you could say '1000 internets to that man!'.

How do you transfer the money though? You enter a twitter name, type 0.10 BTC, hit send - do you have to charge up your 'tipjar' first? Or do you do the transfer direct from your bitcoin client on your PC and the tipjar just sends the '@recipient you recieved 0.10 BTC from @bob' once you see the block appear?

[fpgaminer]

I don't use Twitter often, but here's my stab at a method for implementing this:

*Assuming the thing is called TweetTip. Could be anything. Just to get the idea across...

Step 1) tweet "#tip @bob 1BTC" to the TweetTip account (as suggested)
Step 2) TweetTip tweets back with a unique Bitcoin Address and probably "@bob 1BTC" so you know what it's for.
Step 3) You send your BTC to that address.
Step 4) TweetTip confirms that it has received the amount with a tweet to you.
Step 5) TweetTip checks bob's recent tweets for a receiving address (as suggested).
Step 5a) If found, send BTC to that address. Tweet to bob that he got a tip from @you
Step 5b) If not found, tweet to bob he has Bitcoins waiting! Link to TweetTip.org/HowToGetYourTip
Step 5c) Periodically re-check bob's feed for receiving address up to a maximum time limit (90 days?)
Step 6) Profit


So ... is this possible with Twitter's available API? And if so, does that make the most sense?

The most complicated step is 2&3. If the official bitcoin client had bitcoin:// URI support that'd make things a bit easier. TweetTip could tweet "bitcoin://receivingaddress/btcamount" or whatever back and then it'd just be a matter of clicking and Accepting on the desktop client.

Anyway, thoughts? I'd be willing to take a stab at this if it sounds good to others.

EDIT: Or would this make more sense:

Step 1) Go to tweettip.org, type tiper's name, tipee's name, and amount.
Step 2) Send BTC to address that tweettip.org responds with.
Step 3) Once received and confirmed, TweetTip proceeds from Step 5 above.

[shazow]

Why shackle this into a tweet-driven communication protocol (requiring 4+ tweets per transaction) at all?

I suggest making a service completely independent of twitter, let's call it haveacoin.com or something (actually that's a pretty good domain, someone register it).

1. You go on haveacoin.com and say "I want to give 1 btc to @shazow" (or internets or carrots or whatever you want to call it). You can give your name if you want (let's pretend you're @stonetz).
2. It gives you a unique address to send your 1 btc, you do so and carry on.
3. I get a tweet saying "@shazow You have a fan! @stonetz sent you a bitcoin, collect it here! http://haveacoin.com/1234"
4. I go to the URL, it asks me to authenticate ownership of the @shazow account (via oauth).
5. This logs me in and I can withdraw the balance associated with the @shazow account by sending it to my wallet.

Once that's out and live, you can move on to email or Facebook or SMS or as many authentication sources as you can implement (I'm assuming it's obvious what the verification processes are for email/facebook/sms).

Now we have a Twitter-independent service that spans multiple communication mediums and doesn't require any fancy polling or stream monitoring. Win!

- shazow

[fpgaminer]

I suggest making a service completely independent of twitter, let's call it haveacoin.com or something

Sounds good to me. Basically what I meant by my second suggestion (after the EDIT).

I'd personally still have the option of tweeting your receiving address (with some special syntax). Seems easier to me, although perhaps less secure? *shrugs*

[HostFat]

I like the shazow idea, I also suggest to be able to edit the message and use a service like goo.gl for "http://haveacoin.com/1234"

[markm]

I figured a good traditional tip is two cents, as in "your two cents worth", "my two cents worth" and so on.

That doesn't sit well with one cent transaction fees.

Thus the BitNickel (NKL) was born.

A large part of the reason my IRC bots support BitNickels is in order to implement a "$0.02 <nick>"  command in IRC to send 0.4 NKL to the specified nick. A BitNickel address is created for the specified nick and 0.4 NKL transferred to it.

The assumption is that BitNickels correspond to five "cents" in the context of "my two cents worth".

How much these so called "cents" actually trade for in a free market could of course vary, but by using BitNickels instead of BitCoins we get to only pay a transaction fee of 0.01 NKL instead of 0.01 BTC.

Extending this simple tipping system to other media than IRC does seem like a good idea, I just started with IRC due to not having handy ports people can connect to do implement various protocols with thus used IRC as a way to not need incoming ports to run services.

-MarkM-

[Timo Y]

Tipping is not the killer app IMO because there is nothing that Bitcoin does much better about tipping that other centralised tipping services don't arleady do. 

[SgtSpike]

An addition:  Some kind of barcode or QR code that contains bitcoin addresses.  You can scan it with your phone, enter the amount, click send.  Viola!

I'm not sure how useful that would be in practice, but it sounds cool!  It would make in-person transactions easier though...

"Ok, next I have a capital A, followed by a lowercase z, then a capital M, capital V..."
vs.
"I brought a QR code printout.  Scan it and send me 5BTC plox."

[Rage]

Ok so there's a lot of discussion on this thread but is anyone actually tackling it? If not, I'll take it on. Sounds like a fun project.

Rage

[Stephen Gornick]

I am building it. I can't promise anything, but I am full-time devoted to this right now.

Incidentally, YouTipIt has described their upcoming feature, "escrow" tips -- you'll be able to send a bitcoin tip to any Facebook user, regardless of whether or not they've registered with YouTipIt.
  http://enabledidler.blogspot.com/2011/05/youtipit-relaunch-thunderbirds-are-go.html

[Current-C]

OK, I just registered haveacoin.com (can't believe no one got there first ).  I'll make it available if anyone wants to use it -- just let me know.

[Sull]

I developed an experimental web service last year that inevitably was going to have support for virtual currency (tips).  I'm motivated to dust it off and move it forward now and probably limit the currency to bitcoin only... In an effort to support this movement.

http://ingesture.com/about/

Collaborators are welcome.

@sull

[darbsllim]

subscribed =)

Anyone close to having this finished yet?

[PayBitBack]

I have implemented @PayBitBack, the Bitcoin Tip Jar for Twitter. See http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=14707.0 for the announcement.

[Simon Barber]

See my post on bitcoin URIs - it enables this. (sending BTC in tweets, email, SMS or from a webpage).

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=45512.0