Idea to make bitcoins "take off" !

[colour]

Hi,

I want to present in this posting a possible way to enhance the popularity of bitcoins in the internet community. English is not my first language, please bear with me. I will give a step-by-step overview:

1. Visit your favourite internet forum. The more traffic that forum has, the better. You should already have an account on that forum, so you do not appear as a random spammer.

2. Look for a user who writes a lot of helpful postings in that forum. That user should be really popular and well-liked and competent.

3. Tell that user (via pm or maybe better publically?) how much you enjoy their postings, and that you would like to pay a smallish amount back for his efforts, as a donation or a tip. Tell the user you do not want to use paypal, because they tend to randomly freeze accounts and because you value a certain degree of anonymity. Instead, ask him to put a bitcoin adress into his profile or signature. Offer an amount of bitcoins as a donation/tip that will be just high enough to make it worth their time to download and install the bitcoin client (??like 2 or 3 coins??). Also, tell the user that maybe more people would like to send out a tip/donation if he/she puts the bitcoin adress in his/her signature/profile.

4. Now a highly popular user will openly show a bitcoin adress. This will hopefully lead to two thing: First, more people will see this and will hope to recieve bitcoins for writing useful postings, so hopefully they will also copy that example from the first user and put an adress in their sig. Second, since you picked a popular member who has already helped out a lot of people with his texts, more people will hopefully donate to that user.

The goal is to establish an online-culture of tipping for useful and helpful postings. If enough of the big forums start adopting that practice, it will sweep into the smaller forums by itself, I could imagine. Please think of all the people out there who invest a lot of their time every single day to fill all those forums out there with content. That content is basically generated "for free", and at this point in time there is no way for the readers to give s.th. back to the writers. I believe that such a system of tipping will be welcomed. And bitcoin is the way to make it possible.

If this succeeds, bitcoins will become much more widespread in the internet community. This will in turn cause more services to accept bitcoins, since people will want to exchange their tips for money or goods at some point. From there on, bitcoins will continue their crusade to become the most awesome currency EVER! Or maybe not?

I may or may not try this out in one of the forums I regularly visit, and if I get a popular user to put a bitcoin adress in their sig, I will post about it here, with link and all...

[Jonathan Ryan Owens]

TL;DR

[deslok]

I put an address in my signature just for you to test your new idea

[Matthew N. Wright]

@OP: Hi. I'm the nicest and most thoughtful person around these parts and take great care to make everyone feel welcome so I am obviously going to be very kind with my response to you.

Here is what I have to say about e-begging:

1) "Tips" are intended to be tacked-on to an existing purchase, so you are in fact talking about "donations". Anyone who calls it "tipping" is deranged.

2) Donations are fine (I guess), but I like to get value for my money. When someone claims they're going to feed African children for my $50, I'd like to at least have a photo of them feeding them, not just dump my money down an empty well. When some dude on the street has his hands out for change, I give him a job he can do for me to earn the money. I don't think Bitcoin's future is in donations, although I agree that if you must do donations, bitcoin would make it a bit easier to get them to you (read: wikileaks).

[Jonathan Ryan Owens]

I put an address in my signature just for you to test your new idea

TIPPED 0.0001

DONT SPEND IT ALL IN ONE PLACE.

[colour]

@OP: Hi. I'm the nicest and most thoughtful person around these parts and take great care to make everyone feel welcome so I am obviously going to be very kind with my response to you.

Good Sir, thank you very much for your warm and loving welcome.

1) The concept of tipping is kind of foreign in my country, so I did not know that. I appreciate the information.

2) You compare the system to giving money to a beggar on the street holding out his hands. I would rather compare it to a street artist, who actually offers something (music, paintings, performance) which may or may not be of worth to bypassers. Personally, I like to give a coin to street performers when I enjoy their work. In this way, I can also ensure that the artist may come back some other time to delight me again with their skills.
I have seen people in online forums who invest a ridiculous amount of time and energy to write detailed tutorials, or to help out helpless newbies. Often I have wished to give them s.th. back for their efforts. These people have offered their advice many a times, and will probably continue to do so in the future. So I disagree with your opinion that I would not get "value for my money", as the job has basically already been performed, and with my donation I may even increase the chance of more jobs being performed in the future (in the form of more tutorials and advice and stuff).

[farfiman]

@OP: Hi. I'm the nicest and most thoughtful person around these parts and take great care to make everyone feel welcome so I am obviously going to be very kind with my response to you.

Here is what I have to say about e-begging:

1) "Tips" are intended to be tacked-on to an existing purchase, so you are in fact talking about "donations". Anyone who calls it "tipping" is deranged.

2) Donations are fine (I guess), but I like to get value for my money. When someone claims they're going to feed African children for my $50, I'd like to at least have a photo of them feeding them, not just dump my money down an empty well. When some dude on the street has his hands out for change, I give him a job he can do for me to earn the money. I don't think Bitcoin's future is in donations, although I agree that if you must do donations, bitcoin would make it a bit easier to get them to you (read: wikileaks).

His Idea is not ( I think) primarily to get a system of donations working in the forums , but to make bitcoin more widespread among the internet community.

[Bitcoin Oz]

Atlas Shrugged.

[triplehelix]

i notice a lot of sigs with addresses in them.  do people tip often?