Karma - pay as you go data by sharing your hotspot • Hacker News Board

Re: Karma - pay as you go data by sharing your hotspot

#111

Post by jessaustin » Wed, Dec 05, 2012, 1:38 AM UTC

Cogito wrote: post #105

svachalek wrote: post #56

I had an image of what this was before I clicked the link but I was disappointed. Here's my idea: No hardware required. You share your existing connection (mobile or not). It's public except the user needs to give you some sort of token that you can't forge and shows how much time they used. In turn you can use those tokens to get time on other people's wifi. Basically "pay it forward" with a little bit of abuse prev…

I was thinking about this too, but there is one problem with a purely pay-it-forward type model - there is no 'debt'. That is, how does one earn karma in order to buy uptime? You can 'sell' your connection to someone else, but where do they get their karma from? Part of the solution might be to provide 'seed' karma to new users, but then you inevitably will have users who don't spend the karma they gain and so become…

> inevitably will have users who don't spend the karma they gain and so become karma sinks.

This doesn't seem like a problem to me. A karma sink is a connectivity source. Surely we're trying to optimize for the latter quantity? If it makes you feel bad you can give away prizes or something.

Re: Karma - pay as you go data by sharing your hotspot

#112

Post by bfung » Wed, Dec 05, 2012, 1:47 AM UTC

A couple of points to ponder, more on the "social" aspect:

1. Will there be bandwidth miners / marketing / spammers? Since I get free usage the more people connect to my device, I would tell everyone to connect to me! HEY YOU, EVEN IF YOU DON'T WANT INTERWEBS, CONNECT TO MY DEVICE!! (There's probably an optimal number of connected devices to the karma for best bandwidth usage and latency, but nothing prevents someone from just mining free usage)

2. Will people start "selling" their free bandwidth?

But overall, I like the use of promoting sharing by positive reinforcement for a useful, limited resource. It's close to Zynga games (spam your friends for more virtual resources, which were unlimited in the first place), but somehow feels better...

Re: Karma - pay as you go data by sharing your hotspot

#113

Post by plink » Wed, Dec 05, 2012, 2:46 AM UTC

artursapek wrote: post #100

Groxx wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's so hard to make a fake Facebook account. If someone actually wants to cause trouble, requiring Facebook won't do anything except slow them down for about 20 seconds. I see this "reason" everywhere, but it's total garbage.

Seriously. That's asinine.

"Vomitous" is the word that came to my mind.

Re: Karma - pay as you go data by sharing your hotspot

#114

Post by degroat » Wed, Dec 05, 2012, 3:26 AM UTC

ozi wrote: post #13

dx4100 wrote: post #2

This looks like another result of CLEAR opening up their network for other vendors to sell their data. Freedompop is doing a similar thing, just without the Karma component to it. Nice to see what happens when a company like CLEAR opens things up -- all sorts of innovation springs.

Except the CLEAR network blows. I used to have a couple retail stores and sold them off because I felt terrible getting so many complaints about service quality and could see the company already declining as key investors were pulling out. The nodes were initially unsaturated and speedy -- you could often get 15-20mbps on mobile hotspot. Now people are lucky to get 512kbps on their home modems in moderately dense res…

Clear's network isn't great, but I really like the pay-as-you go aspect of this. Right now I'm paying $25 a month for an unlocked iSpot but I go weeks without using it.

Re: Karma - pay as you go data by sharing your hotspot

#115

Post by lnanek2 » Wed, Dec 05, 2012, 3:56 AM UTC

driverdan wrote: post #46

A good idea but with far too little bandwidth. 1GB / 100MB is nothing. Between syncing git repos, remote backup, Dropbox, and heavy web browsing (not including Netflix) I go through at least 5GB a day. I'll stick with Clear's own access point at $50/m for unlimited access. It works pretty well in most cities but can be sensitive to positioning.

The idea is worthless if no one has to buy, remember. The whole idea is to give out a little free to get people connected and hooked, let them use up their data, then charge the hell out of them.

I think it's awesome, by the way. It basically the freemium model that is kicking ass in software right now, ported over to the real world.

Re: Karma - pay as you go data by sharing your hotspot

#116

Post by BHSPitMonkey » Wed, Dec 05, 2012, 4:13 AM UTC

eupharis wrote: post #44

YES! Bought. So disruptive. Goodbye dumbphone. Hellloooo karma. Skipped right over the buying smartphone "minutes" and "text" nonsense. Genius marketing model. If I get to customize the SSID it'll be something like: "yourkarma.com, use this wifi!". SSID can only be 32 characters. A shorter, recognizable domain like "kar.ma" would be awesome. More space for cleverness. Living in a busy apartment complex near the cente…

100MB is the bonus you get whenever someone new connects to your device (seems like a referral bonus); 1GB is how much your account is pre-loaded with when you buy one of these things.

Re: Karma - pay as you go data by sharing your hotspot

#117

Post by weisser » Wed, Dec 05, 2012, 5:52 AM UTC

It costs $14.99 for 250 megabytes per month of internet for my iPad through ATT. That's unacceptable. I bought one of these instantly.

The ripple effect of purchases was incredible when this was announced. A musician friend who is not a tech person in the slightest posted about it within 30 minutes of the TC article-a site I know he doesn't read-meaning it already spread through a few people before it reached him. Within five minutes of seeing his post I bought one. I shared it to my Facebook wall and 3 people have said they bought one because of my post within 12 hours and I only have 269 friends.

Re: Karma - pay as you go data by sharing your hotspot

#118

Post by gonehome » Wed, Dec 05, 2012, 6:41 AM UTC

Kerrick wrote: post #81

stephengillie wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please remember that this isn't a phone/text/data service. This is ONLY internet. If you have Skype/Google Voice/Lync/etc then you can place phone calls with an internet (IP) phone or computer or device . Likewise for text messages. You could keep this on your person, and just be a walking mobile hotspot.

I do this already: I use VoIP for talk and Google Voice for messaging on my Nexus 4. I don't have a minute plan, and only use data.

What's your VoIP set up? I messed with sip sorcery and sipgate paired with google voice back in the day right after gizmo5 went dark, but it was a nightmare to set up and the lag made it difficult to use.

Re: Karma - pay as you go data by sharing your hotspot

#119

Post by gfodor » Wed, Dec 05, 2012, 6:58 AM UTC

So is this a valid strategy? Basically find a local coffeeshop or place of general laptoppery that lacks good wifi and hide your karma somewhere clever, and come back a day or two later after you watch the free bandwidth rack up? You'd just need to figure out a way to keep it powered, probably a battery pack or something.

I'd imagine just stashing one of these in SFO somewhere would get you a shitton of free data. (editted, misread pricing. you'd need about 60 people to get on it before you've paid for the device if it were stolen.)

Re: Karma - pay as you go data by sharing your hotspot

#120

Post by stephengillie » Wed, Dec 05, 2012, 11:22 AM UTC

gonehome wrote: post #118

Kerrick wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do this already: I use VoIP for talk and Google Voice for messaging on my Nexus 4. I don't have a minute plan, and only use data.

What's your VoIP set up? I messed with sip sorcery and sipgate paired with google voice back in the day right after gizmo5 went dark, but it was a nightmare to set up and the lag made it difficult to use.

GV still has multi second delay