171–180 of 232 posts
The credits lasted 10 minutes before used up. Should be interesting to see if this results in any downloads.
Proof of top up: http://twitpic.com/62shre
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Jonathan here: Yes, unfortunately I do get the rewards. I get a free coffee for every 15 purchased. I figured that the free coffees would accrue to the card itself and therefore every 16th person would get a free coffee. As it turns out, sbux mails free coffee coupons to me: http://yfrog.com/keup3hxj I'm not sure how to redistribute them fairly, but I was thinking that I could at least pass them out at my local store…
Buy a homeless person a coffee this winter and have a chat with them.
$5,000 for @jonathanscard ... why not! http://twitter.com/#!/Socialize/status/100375061587951616
Things like this are just apt for abuse. While in real life when this happens, we get a small connection with the person (they live near me / they also were getting coffee), on the internet, people only see a free gift card that automatically refills itself, and not the people that paid for it. When you are playing with other peoples money, it's hard to be frugal.
I'm trying to figure out- what's the difference between loading the card and just dropping $10 on the ground?
- You don't need a smartphone to use ten dollars you found on the ground.
- Cash can be spent somewhere other than Starbucks.
- There's no twitter account broadcasting the amount of money dropped on the ground.
- If you find money on the ground, chances are not good that it was dropped by someone from HN.
- If you tweet about money you found on the ground, you are just a jerk.
Things like this are just apt for abuse. While in real life when this happens, we get a small connection with the person (they live near me / they also were getting coffee), on the internet, people only see a free gift card that automatically refills itself, and not the people that paid for it. When you are playing with other peoples money, it's hard to be frugal.
I'm trying to figure out- what's the difference between loading the card and just dropping $10 on the ground?
Posting it to HN should bring interesting results. There's still money on it at the moment.
This reminds me of something that happened when I was just a bit younger... My girlfriend and I were graduating from pharmacy school and she was applying for residency positions (yes, they have those for pharmacists). Well, she found out she got the one she really wanted and so that night we went out to a nice dinner to celebrate. We did it up like you would expect a happy couple to - nice bottle of wine, share an ap…
Jonathan here: Thank you so much for sharing your story – it really made my day. "Kindness that spreads uncontrollably" perfectly sums up my highest hopes for this experiment. Best, j
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Yeah, I was thinking about that too. One thought I had (which others have suggested) is to encourage people to donate in small amounts— rather than drop $25 on the card if you're feeling generous, you should drop $5 on it each morning for a week. But since that's kind of a hassle, then you'd whip up a quick app that lets people easily amortize a larger contribution over a series of coffee-scale contributions. Connect…
The thing that scares me about this idea is the effect it would have on the donor if they didn't see their donation reflected immediately in the feed. Not only is it less exciting, but it potentially opens up questions about where the money is in the meantime. I will strenuously avoid this turning into anything resembling a bank - it needs to be more like a "take a penny, leave a penny" tray sitting on a Starbucks co…
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Jonathan here: I've been thinking about this quite a bit. One the one hand, last week some jerk saw a $50 balance and spent the whole thing in one shot. On the other hand, people need to know when there is money on the card if they are thinking about walking down to a sbux to get a coffee. I might try the "there's more than $10 on the card right now". I've also experimented with delaying the reloaded messages, and do…
Out of curiosity, every 15 coffees people buy, does Starbucks send you a coupon for a free drink in the mail?
Oh and btw my name is jonathan too. Pretty cool
Things like this are just apt for abuse. While in real life when this happens, we get a small connection with the person (they live near me / they also were getting coffee), on the internet, people only see a free gift card that automatically refills itself, and not the people that paid for it. When you are playing with other peoples money, it's hard to be frugal.
I'm trying to figure out- what's the difference between loading the card and just dropping $10 on the ground?