A new fun way to send and receive tips and donations over the internet has recently appeared. The service is called ChangeTip and it is basically a micropayments infrastructure for the web and it lets users send and receive the digital currency Bitcoin.
ChangeTip, the popular social media tipping platform, has recently announced that it has raised a $3.5 million Seed Round. Bitcoin investment company Pantera Capital is leading the round, with participation from Bold Start Ventures, CryptoCurrency Partners, DCG, 500 Startups, and others. This latest round of funding will be apportioned towards platform engineering development, product enhancement, and user acquisition.
ChangeTip is a Bitcoin-enabled social media tipping platform by which users can send any amount of money over 35 different social media platforms or content showcase channels, including Twitter, Google+, YouTube, Reddit, and GitHub. The integration of Facebook is still in progress. Users can reward content creators with small amounts of money by way of a simple online comment or reply.
Changetip is using algorithms developed in fields such as Advanced Robotics/Deep Learning to analyze messages containing the amounts tipped and correctly identified the identities involved in a tip transaction. Users are identified by their Social Network ID, but if one sends a tip to a profile that isn’t yet a Changetip user, he/she will be invited to join and claim the tip, unclaimed tips are returned to the sender.
“The social media phenomenon of ‘tipping’, or expressing one’s appreciation over the Internet with small monetary or other digital gifts, is building momentum,” said Nick Sullivan, ChangeTip founder and CEO. “With ChangeTip, a million users can tip $0.01 and the content creator can collect his $10,000 – an impossibility in a legacy payments world.”
Common tipping situations are the following: tipping for comment appreciation, or as a gift; tipping to reward intelligent publications or worthy content marketing material; tipping favorite actors, musicians, writers or other public figures; tipping songs or drawings; tipping in place of the “Like” or “Upvote” buttons to give the action practical meaning; tipping as a way to pay back small debts; and tipping as a way to make small donations to charities and other non-profit entities.
Moreover, one can create his/her own tipping page and link it anywhere to receive Bitcoin tips over the page. Here is the example of tipping page to see how it looks like.
“Tipping is likely to be Bitcoin’s first killer app – seamlessly integrated into social media, enabling people to send money in a free, fun, instantaneous way without borders or minimums. This could have a huge impact on Bitcoin adoption. Years ago I received my first bitcoins free from Gavin Andresen’s Bitcoin Faucet. When we look back in a year’s time, there is a good chance that the majority will have received their first bitcoins free via ChangeTip,” commented Dan Morehead, Pantera Capital CEO.
Zhanna has a background working for an American multinational food and beverage company as well as at a number of translation agencies serving similar top multinational corporations. She enjoys discovering new cultures as well as learning new languages. She is also a lover of all things fabric and floral ,especially if they are design-related. Zhanna is a graduate of Belarusian State Economic University with a major in Intercultural Business Communications.
