Comments on: Can Twollars become a ‘real’ internet currency?

By: Otto Newhouse

Otto Newhouse — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 08:44:46 +0000

Mike, thanks for raising that point. And a big thank you to Sepp for mentioning ecoTwollars…The real power I see in using Twollar and derivatives such as the distinct eco-tank-you I launched with Placemark through it, is by keeping it to the many small principle. In this respect I was inspired by micro-financing, the upward-spiral movement and the proven fact those “playings” CAN remain sustainable and grow robust through the many small concept. There is no incentive in rorting micro-streams as the effort is much bigger than a possible gain. For this reason, my present hope in a workable win-win eco-currency is keeping to the many small principle, peer to peer.
The other nice challenge is specifically with ecoTwollar. In this respect it is only a beta version…and so far I can only monitor effects on Twitter, so it is a necessary and sufficient limitation for the moment: How to weave micro-trickles into a stream, and conversely how to decouple a stream – real time. Eg #waterSaving, #energySaving, #plasticRecycling, etc trickles may be woven into an #eco stream… But #eco does not necessarily unfold into all those trickles…And, yes, Wave may try and steal ecoTwollar by default if they buy out Twollar too… But Google has been trying efficient clustering for a long time…and they are probably still a long way to get there…;-)

By: Sepp Hasslberger

Sepp Hasslberger — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 20:30:25 +0000

@ Alex –
Twollars is a special case – it is a currency that only works inside Twitter, and mainly to show appreciation for good works.

Paypal is a payment system that interfaces with your bank account and that allows you to make payments like with a credit card, but it doesn’t require a card, only your name and password.

Ripple is interesting and it’s a system that (potentially) routes payments peer-to-peer. The original idea of Ripple was to be based on people giving credit to their friends, but unfortunately there was no way into the “real world” of shopping. Ripple is open source, that’s true, but it is kind of stalled in its development as there hasn’t been a good plan on how to implement it.

@ Mike,
no real danger on Twollars being misused. Even if someone can make several Twitter accounts and distribute the Twollars that come with each account, they aren’t at a particular advantage over other Twitter users (except maybe for the fact that they can distribute more appreciation points to friends and charities…

By: Mike Chelen

Mike Chelen — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 04:42:51 +0000

There is a risk of exploitation for any currency that is given to new accounts without further qualification. It would be trivial to register many such accounts, and thereby gain an unfair advantage.

By: Alex

Alex — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 07:01:42 +0000

Twollars is just another payment system like Paypal?

What about Ripplepay? That looks interesting as it’s open source.