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Show HN: Expensive Chat – Pay one cent per letter

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

#91

Post by pluma »

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?

When famed game designer Peter Molyneux came back out of hiding to launch his mobile games with a company called 22cans he also used the "social experiment" label to justify a pay-to-win clicker game and a "crowdfunded" god game with in-app purchases (that were later removed).

The answer is: "social experiment" apps and games are just cash grabs with a veneer of clever marketing to them. The Million Dollar Homepage was probably the first one this blatant though.

The outcome of the "experiment" is known in advance: people will pay unreasonable amounts of money for objectively worthless things if you can convince enough of them that it's cool. If it were an actual experiment, there would be some analysis published after the fact and the money would either be reimbursed or donated.

Social experiments aren't experiments and they're mostly anti-social if anything. In video content it's code for (staged) "prank" (or harassment). In cases like this it's code for "grifting".

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

#92

Post by pbhjpbhj »

Hmm, don't think I'm giving a random site (that breaches EU online business laws: must have an irl address for service) my CC info.

If you spend 1¢ on posting ":smiley:" every day, won't that cost him about 20¢ transaction costs? Eventual DoS by CC transaction costs??

Love the spirit of it on an intellectual level though.

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

#93

Post by wgx »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #92

Hmm, don't think I'm giving a random site (that breaches EU online business laws: must have an irl address for service) my CC info. If you spend 1¢ on posting ":smiley:" every day, won't that cost him about 20¢ transaction costs? Eventual DoS by CC transaction costs?? Love the spirit of it on an intellectual level though.

It's using Stripe for payment, so this site never sees your CC info.

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

#94

Post by pluma »

0-_-0 wrote: post #26
jstanley wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If the money was donated this would just make this an alternative way to donate money to charity, the creator pocketing the money is necessary for this to be a social experiment.

Neato. I'll just refer to beggars and scammers as "social experimenters" from now on then.

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

#95

Post by johnisgood »

worldsayshi wrote: post #85
johnisgood wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I am sorry about that! I wouldn't have known it would do that, I do not use my mobile to browse the Internet because it does freeze more often than not, and when it does not, it is slow. :/

It should work from your PC though.

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

#96

Post by amingilani »

wgx wrote: post #93
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #92

Hmm, don't think I'm giving a random site (that breaches EU online business laws: must have an irl address for service) my CC info. If you spend 1¢ on posting ":smiley:" every day, won't that cost him about 20¢ transaction costs? Eventual DoS by CC transaction costs?? Love the spirit of it on an intellectual level though.

It's using Stripe for payment, so this site never sees your CC info.

Yes, but the costs are still the same. Even stripe has a 2.9% + 30¢ cost per transaction.

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

#97

Post by Kinnard »

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?

What makes this not a social experiment?

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

#99

Post by newman8r »

PUSH_AX wrote: post #37
lathiat wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The page is still up :-) http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/ History: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Million_Dollar_Homepage

The ads also still get traffic, A while back I wrote a script to list all the domains that had expired and bought one at random for shits and giggles. GA reported about 100 uniques per month.

that's a pretty interesting idea. I did something similar a while back to grab expired image hosting websites that still had a ton of images linked to them.

expired domains are a continual source of fun.

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

#100

Post by [deleted] »

pluma wrote: post #91
jstanley wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

When famed game designer Peter Molyneux came back out of hiding to launch his mobile games with a company called 22cans he also used the "social experiment" label to justify a pay-to-win clicker game and a "crowdfunded" god game with in-app purchases (that were later removed). The answer is: "social experiment" apps and games are just cash grabs with a veneer of clever marketing to them. The Million Dollar Homepage w…

[deleted]
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