[ANNOUNCE] btctip.com- send bitcoins with a tweet

[amincd]

I'm pleased to announce the beta release of http://www.btctip.com, a service that allows you to send any Twitter user bitcoins with a tweet.

You can log in to the website with your Twitter account, no other sign up necessary. Through the site interface, you can see your account history, and withdraw and deposit bitcoins.

Green address deposits

Currently you can deposit from a MtGox green address to have your deposit registered with zero-confirmations, in about 30 seconds. Non-green-address deposits take three confirmations, or about 30 minutes, to be registered by the site.

Sending bitcoins

The format for sending bitcoins is:

#btctip [recipient] [amount] [unit]

For example:

#btctip @BobOnTwitter 10 centcoins

The permitted units are bitcoins, centcoins (0.01 BTC), and millicoins (0.001 BTC).

The variations and aliases of each that are recognized by btctip.com are:

bitcoin: bitcoin(s) and btc

centcoin: centcoin(s), bitcent(s), cbtc, and internet(s)

millicoin: millicoin(s), millibit(s), mbtc, and woolong(s)

Note that , (comma) is treated the same as . (decimal mark), so for example, 10,2 bitcents will be interpreted as 10.2 bitcents.

Your tweet can contain other text as well, as long as some segment of it contains the tipping command.

For example, this would be valid:

Great post! #btctip @BobOnTwitter 10 centcoins!

After btctip.com has registered your tweet, the Twitter account @btctip will post a tweet verifying the transaction, in the following format:

@Recipient, you received a [Amount] BTC tip from @Sender! Log in with Twitter to btctip.com to claim your bitcoin!

Unclaimed tips

If the tip recipient doesn't become a BTCTip user (which happens automatically when they log in) within 5 days of the tip being sent, then the tip will be returned to you. If they are already BTCTip users, their tip is considered claimed whether they log in or not.

1 day before the tip is returned, @btctip will post a tweet alerting the tip recipient that they have 1 more day to log in before their tip is returned.

Inspiration

I got the idea for the site in this thread:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5382.0

The site is very new and has had very little testing in a live environment, so please don't store more than small amounts of bitcoin on it.

If you have any questions send me a PM or post it here.

Tip for sending: Occasionally a #btctip command will fail to be read by the BTCTip bot and will not illicit a tip transaction through btctip.com. To maximize the chances of your tip command working, we advise you make the tweet containing the #btctip command a normal tweet rather than a reply tweet. This is because the BTCTip bot scans through Twitter's search results stream to find a tweet containing a #btctip command, and reply tweets show up in Twitter's search results less reliably than normal tweets

Happy Tweeting

Updates:

**May 5th 2012** Added 'unclaimed tips' section

**December 23rd 2012** Added 'internet(s)' as an alias of the 'bitcent' unit, and 'woolong(s)' as an alias of the 'millibit' unit, and added note recommending tips be regular tweets rather than reply tweets

**May 16th 2013** Added 'centcoin(s)' as an alias for 'bitcent' and 'millicoin(s)' as an alias for 'millibit'. These new aliases are featured as the primary ways to refer to the cBTC and mBTC denominations, respectively, on btctip.com.

A new BTCTip Tweet Box has been released, that website owners can customize on http://btctip.com and embed in their websites to receive BTC microdonations. It's been set up on http://kianoo.com as a test case.

**May 22nd 2013** Reduced minimum tip amount from 1 centcoin (1 cBTC) to 1 millicoin (1 mBTC).

[weex]

Great idea and I wish you luck. This could be great for Bitcoin.

Can I ask your reasoning for the following new people and update your profile permissions?

This application will be able to:
Read Tweets from your timeline.
See who you follow, and follow new people.
Update your profile.
Post Tweets for you.

[amincd]

Glad you like the idea!

This application will be able to:
Read Tweets from your timeline.
See who you follow, and follow new people.
Update your profile.
Post Tweets for you.

Good question. These were probably the default permissions. I'll ask the guy who developed the site for me if we can eliminate:

"See who you follow, and follow new people.
Update your profile.
Post Tweets for you."

As I see no need for them.

[cunicula]

Does this differ in some way from "http://www.paybitback.com/"? They have been around for a while providing an extremely similar service, but have not attracted a meaningful use volume.

[weex]

Does this differ in some way from "http://www.paybitback.com/"? They have been around for a while providing an extremely similar service, but have not attracted a meaningful use volume.

That site appears to have been launched in a fire-and-forget manner. Ease of use has to be part of the solution and from their intro thread, I didn't see much promise. Just because an idea is cool and potentially beneficial for its users doesn't mean people will seek it out. That does bring up a couple other good questions though.

Amincd, how do you plan to keep the lights on(i.e. make enough to be sustainable) for this service?

Have thought about what you're going to do for marketing (outside this forum post/reddit)?

[cunicula]

Does this differ in some way from "http://www.paybitback.com/"? They have been around for a while providing an extremely similar service, but have not attracted a meaningful use volume.

That site appears to have been launched in a fire-and-forget manner.

That's 100% true. What I really want to know is how they are going to position/market themselves. I didn't mean that it was a stupid service. One idea is to package an advertisement from tweet for bitcoins with each tweet. This would seem to be a nicely targeted advertising. Though again, tweet for bitcoins hasn't attracted that much use.

[amincd]

Does this differ in some way from "http://www.paybitback.com/"?

From what I understand, paybitback allows any one to create a bitcoin address for any one else on Twitter, that the latter can 'claim' by posting their bitcoin address in a tweet to @paybitback.

Btctip is different in that you don't need to publicize your bitcoin address to withdraw the tips you receive, which protects your privacy, and all tips are publicized in tweets, which helps promote both bitcoin and the #btctip service.

Amincd, how do you plan to keep the lights on(i.e. make enough to be sustainable) for this service?

My current plan is to sell advertising space on the site once it has enough to traffic to be worth the trouble. I imagine the ad space would be particularly attractive for bitcoin exchanges and merchants, as the site, if popular, will have a lot of visitors who will be receiving bitcoins for the first time and would want to sell/spend them.

Have thought about what you're going to do for marketing (outside this forum post/reddit)?

No, I haven't thought about that yet. I've been mostly betting on word of mouth. *Edit, although that's a good point, I should start thinking about other advertising channels, perhaps a 'promoted' tweet would be a good idea

[cunicula]

Does this differ in some way from "http://www.paybitback.com/"?

From what I understand, paybitback allows any one to create a bitcoin address for any one else on Twitter, that the latter can 'claim' by posting their bitcoin address in a tweet to @paybitback.

Btctip is different in that you don't need to publicize your bitcoin address to withdraw the tips you receive, which protects your privacy, and all tips are publicized in tweets, which helps promote both bitcoin and the #btctip service.

Amincd, how do you plan to keep the lights on(i.e. make enough to be sustainable) for this service?

My current plan is to sell advertising space on the site once it has enough to traffic to be worth the trouble. I imagine the ad space would be particularly attractive for bitcoin exchanges and merchants, as the site, if popular, will have a lot of visitors who will be receiving bitcoins for the first time and would want to sell/spend them.

Have thought about what you're going to do for marketing (outside this forum post/reddit)?

No, I haven't thought about that yet. I've been mostly betting on word of mouth. *Edit, although that's a good point, I should start thinking about other advertising channels, perhaps a 'promoted' tweet would be a good idea

I was wondering about that issue. Forced publication of addresses never made sense to me in paybitback. Good thinking!

[weex]

Any update on the permissions?

In what I could find ( https://dev.twitter.com/docs/application-permission-model ), you probably have the minimum permissions that Twitter will let you have and still be able to send tweets on behalf of your users.

[John (John K.)]

This seems to be a viable approach of twitter-based bitcoin tweeting, so keep it up!

[amincd]

Any update on the permissions?

Yes, it's being fixed, but it requires re-writing some code as we need the site's status-posting function to use a separate Twitter application from the site users so that we can post tweets, while regular accounts aren't required to grant status-posting permissions to the site. Right now the whole site uses one Twitter application.

This seems to be a viable approach of twitter-based bitcoin tweeting, so keep it up!

Good thinking!

Thanks for the words of encouragement.

[HostFat]

My current plan is to sell advertising space on the site once it has enough to traffic to be worth the trouble. I imagine the ad space would be particularly attractive for bitcoin exchanges and merchants, as the site, if popular, will have a lot of visitors who will be receiving bitcoins for the first time and would want to sell/spend them.

Can you add something like this?
http://dailybitcoins.org
https://coinad.com

the main difference ( with your service ) is that  people will be able to send Bitcoin to others ( just by tweeting ) without the need of the Bitcoin address. ( and without owning anything )
It's a good way to spread the Bitcoin verb to people that don't know it.
Moreover, in reality there won't be any bitcoin sent if no one will come to claim them
( they will also spam your service )

[finway]

Cool.

[amincd]

Can you add something like this?
http://dailybitcoins.org
https://coinad.com

Thanks for your suggestion. If it's more profitable than other options, then quite possibly. I also have to take into account how it affects the site's overall look. An ad for an exchange for example would look more professional than something like this so I might opt for it even if it has a slightly lower cpm.

[amincd]

UPDATE:

The permissions have been changed so that the application can no longer:

Update your profile.
Post Tweets for you.

Looking forward to your feedback.

Weex, if you give me your Twitter account name, I'd like to send you 1 BTC for finding the permission problem. If you'd prefer to be sent the coin directly just pm me your bitcoin address.

[amincd]

Some good news. A btctip tweet was retweeted by Matthew Bishop, NY Bureau Chief of The Economist and co-author of Philanthrocapitalism & www.philanthrocapitalism.net, to his 29,017 followers:

https://twitter.com/btctip/status/183252330655911936

[weex]

Thanks, I got it. Will be looking to tip others when appropriate.

Edit: One issue I see is that I had literally no indication that I have been tipped. Twitter sends emails when one gets a direct message so perhaps that is why you would want to use DMs. Otherwise, someone would have to have some sort of alert setup on their account or login regularly and look through all their newest "Interactions".

[amincd]

Unfortunately you can't send a DM to someone unless they follow you.

Luckily the default notification setting for Twitter users is to receive emails when they get mentioned in a tweet so most people should be notified when they get a tip tweet.

[bbit]

Cool 

[LiteBit]

Added to my reading list.
I'd like to incorporate this service into our "Support This Project" section on our community projects.
Sounds cool.