Did you ever hear of the social network Capazoo? I did 'cause I worked for them.
They had a tipping system for users, and they got nothing but flack for it -- well, that and a kind of referral program that tipped users for referring their friends.
The point is that users tend to be very suspicious about anything that compensates them for their participation. It carries the connotation that the product is (1) not good enough on its own, and (2) if you're actually paying users, there must be some ulterior motive for luring them in.
Hopefully for Salon, the fact that the entire tipping system is peer-to-peer will remove some of that anathema of a virtual micro-currency. It did, after all, work for SecondLife. However, there might still be a danger that users will be too suspicious to participate just because the incentivization system is there.
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They had a tipping system for users, and they got nothing but flack for it -- well, that and a kind of referral program that tipped users for referring their friends.
The point is that users tend to be very suspicious about anything that compensates them for their participation. It carries the connotation that the product is (1) not good enough on its own, and (2) if you're actually paying users, there must be some ulterior motive for luring them in.
Hopefully for Salon, the fact that the entire tipping system is peer-to-peer will remove some of that anathema of a virtual micro-currency. It did, after all, work for SecondLife. However, there might still be a danger that users will be too suspicious to participate just because the incentivization system is there.