Twollars, a name made up of Twitter and Dollars, aren’t ‘real’ money – at least not yet.

(http://p2pfoundation.net/Twollars)

(http://twollars.com/)

The Twollar is an appreciation unit that can be given by simply tweeting a worthy recipient, specifying how many Twollars you want to give. More than that, though, it’s a harbinger of things to come. My prediction is that before we know it, we will be using a currency that lets us buy and sell things without the need for banks, credit cards and wallets for our coins.

For now, Twollars are a way of saying “I like what you are doing”. They provide a way for charities to raise money, says Stan Shroeder in his article on mashable.

Alan Rosenblith, in a post on newcurrencyfrontiers, brings an important additional concept to the discussion:

“Twollars is using a very popular existing platform (Twitter) for transacting and accounting. Most currency efforts to date have depended on a separate platform specifically designed for currency exchange. While this has yielded some limited results, people who want to participate have been forced into walled gardens. Twollars gives added functionality to an existing user identity thereby lowering the entrance barrier.”

This is of great importance because, although there are many local currencies, for now they are more a thing to play with rather than a useful and universally accepted means of payment. We can’t buy and sell a wide range of goods and services with them, and we can’t pay taxes or rent either. To make a currency really useful, what we need is universal acceptability. Twollars bring us a step closer to that goal by the mere fact that they are a part of Twitter. Every Twitter user becomes a potential participant, someone who will accept and use the currency.

But we aren’t quite there yet. So far, Twollars are purely idealistic. Twitter users get 50 Twollars when they open their account. They can spend those, expressing their appreciation for something their friends are doing or to help a charity they like. Through this mechanism, the appreciation units eventually accumulate with charities that are registered with Twitter . If you run a charity and want to participate, there is a registration page at http://twollars.com/twollars-for-charities/.

What do charities do with all their Twollars? Well, they can sell them to anyone who wants to buy. The current rate is 10 Twollars to one Dollar. In this way, real resources eventually come to match the appreciation units and charities are helped with real-world finance. Businesses that like to show they are socially aware and care about doing good are prime candidates for buying Twollars from charities. This way the units get back into circulation as they are again given away – say to clients who visit the businesses’ websites.

ecoTwollar

There is even a way to use Twollars to reward behavior that is ecologically responsible. It is experimental for now and is called the ecoTwollar (http://wikiwikimoney.com/ecoTwollar). The initiator says to tweet ecoTwollars to others, specifically to reward verifiable small acts that are positive in an ecological sense.

• “The ecoTwollar experiment is now in full swing in the #OpenMoney multi-currency meme as a trial beta on Twitter. Feel encouraged to tweet Give #ecoTwollar Tws for a single VERIFIABLE micro eco-Acts and mark it with a simple but succinct #hashtag. For this to happen, you need to request a pic-link to see if it was genuine and innovative (if it hasn’t already been provided.)
  And keep propelling the upward spiral, by awarding it in your network and spreading the news on and off-line.”

If you want to know what that upward spiral is, here’s a video that explains the concept. In short, Nature promotes growth by altering flows. If a flow can be redirected, things can change in a serious way. So ecoTwollars are an attempt to redirect our actions by rewarding a positive change, how we start caring for the environment…

‘Real’ money?

Now what about Twollars becoming a ‘real’ currency, one that permits us to not only to appreciate but to ‘do business’ with others. How will that transformation come about?

To be honest, I don’t know and probably no one does. Perhaps Twitter or another social network will jump start it. Google has been working on an API for a virtual currency standard. Here is their third revision.

(Opensocial Virtual Currency API Proposal)

For sure someone will figure out how to put it all together.

Stan Rhodes recently commented to Michel, who posted this:

I suspect twollars is little league to prepare for using Google Wave to make Wavoleons or Wavebux or obs or whatever. They didn’t know about Wave when they started, but I’d be surprised if they don’t have
their eye on it now.

So, if we look at possible next moves in the arms race:

1. money moves into the internet via projects that are building open money systems
2. open money systems that are easiest to use and access by the mainstream are adopted rapidly by the tech savvy for small transactions
3. diverse money systems are created, but only a few are used, moves quickly toward one
4. they’re used for all sorts of legal and illegal activities
5. governments go after traders, like China did with QQ coins
6. organized crime increasingly tries to squeeze in as the buying power increases
7. governments, particularly the United States, strike at two points in the infrastructure: businesses and ISPs
8. people route around businesses with virtual enterprises, and route around ISPs via peer open telecom tech
9. the “rickroll” becomes the world’s first true global currency after a scandal with “lollars”

With economies lagging for lack of money, I would say it is important to work out an alternative to have a failsafe, just in case. It seems we’re on our way to doing that, and Twollars are certainly a milestone.