Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Expensive Chat – Pay one cent per letter

expensive.chat

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 215 posts

Re: Show HN: Expensive Chat – Pay one cent per letter

#81

Post by codeulike »

marc wrote: post #3

Hi all. About 2.5 years ago I created Highscore Money. I was looking at pay-to-play games and wondered what would happen if you'd take it to the extreme. The result was just a leaderboard you'd pay your way into. Whatever you pay, that's your score. Today, I'm launching a new social experiment. A chatroom where you pay for every message you send. Normally chatrooms can get messy quick, because there's no cost to send…

Front-page of HN and its not working. No-one has said anything for 90 mins. I tried to chat, signed up, nothing happened.

Re: Show HN: Expensive Chat – Pay one cent per letter

#84

Post by TrickyRick »

comboy wrote: post #16
marc wrote: post #3

Hi all. About 2.5 years ago I created Highscore Money. I was looking at pay-to-play games and wondered what would happen if you'd take it to the extreme. The result was just a leaderboard you'd pay your way into. Whatever you pay, that's your score. Today, I'm launching a new social experiment. A chatroom where you pay for every message you send. Normally chatrooms can get messy quick, because there's no cost to send…

I see a following potential issue: when it becomes popular, company advertising product is much more likely to spend $1 than the average user. Interestingly enough that should hold true regardless of the price (assuming popularity, and very low risk that this is all just generated by a single person). Because users who spend more money are a more valuable target.

Didn't this happen to the donation leaderboards on Humble Bundle? I recall that being the case a few years ago at least. Of course all the money went to a good cause so it's all good.

Re: Show HN: Expensive Chat – Pay one cent per letter

#85

Post by worldsayshi »

johnisgood wrote: post #64
have_faith wrote: post #18

Reminds me of that 1000x1000 ad site from the 90's where you could buy an ad based on how many pixels you purchased. Allow someone to pay to set the chat room topic, the colour scheme, etc. Maybe some Rich instagram kids will throw some cash at it for bragging rights.

Something like that is still up, albeit with a cryptocurrency: http://iota.show I know, it is not exactly identical to what you are saying, but this is what came to mind, and the idea is very similar, if not the same.

Made my mobile Chrome app freeze and crash.

Re: Show HN: Expensive Chat – Pay one cent per letter

#86

Post by iagooar »

puranjay wrote: post #66
iagooar wrote: post #65

Business idea: corporate email system that offers a limited amount of emails per month, and once the limit gets hit, discounts money from employee's salary. Add a formula that makes it exponentially more expensive if you add more people to CC. Problem with corporate mailing hell solved.

That would just mean employees would make every email like 1,000 words long

Well, that would be a clear win, because you would reduce the amount of distraction.

Re: Show HN: Expensive Chat – Pay one cent per letter

#87

Post by onion2k »

jstanley wrote: post #5
marc wrote: post #3

Hi all. About 2.5 years ago I created Highscore Money. I was looking at pay-to-play games and wondered what would happen if you'd take it to the extreme. The result was just a leaderboard you'd pay your way into. Whatever you pay, that's your score. Today, I'm launching a new social experiment. A chatroom where you pay for every message you send. Normally chatrooms can get messy quick, because there's no cost to send…

What makes this a social experiment rather than a simple cash grab? Are you donating all the money to a charity?

Who says you can't profit from an experiment?

Re: Show HN: Expensive Chat – Pay one cent per letter

#88

Post by thejohnconway »

bambax wrote: post #82

"letter" seems ambiguous? I thought it meant "message" but it means "character". I'm not a native English speaker though so maybe it's just me.

I can see why that might seem ambiguous, but I've never heard anyone refer to an electronic message as a "letter". A letter is always in physical form.

"Character" has its own ambiguities (am I a character in this chat room?)

Re: Show HN: Expensive Chat – Pay one cent per letter

#89

Post by iagooar »

smt88 wrote: post #69
iagooar wrote: post #65

Business idea: corporate email system that offers a limited amount of emails per month, and once the limit gets hit, discounts money from employee's salary. Add a formula that makes it exponentially more expensive if you add more people to CC. Problem with corporate mailing hell solved.

This would result in incessant phone calls. That's purely hypothetical, of course, because no one would take a job at that company.

> This would result in incessant phone calls.

Make those expensive, too. Or accept people making more phone calls, which is perfectly fine, because you can only call one person at a time.

> no one would take a job at that company

Not if you are already working there, and not if the company sells it as a huge improvement to work productivity and fewer distractions.

Re: Show HN: Expensive Chat – Pay one cent per letter

#90

Post by wongarsu »

This reminds me of Twitch, where many streamers have it set up so that you can get a message displayed or even automatically read out on stream if you accompany it with a donation. Of course there it is in addition to a regular free chat and more often used to get the streamer's attention
Post reply on HN