“ChangeTip Facebook Integration: The San Francisco based Bitcoin microtransactions startup, ChangeTip, now allows Facebook friends to Tip in Bitcoin.
That was the news, that NewsBTC has been keeping track ever since we met them at CES15, in Vegas —but here is the inference, of what ChangeTip Facebook Integration means for the Bitcoin community.
ChangeTip rolled out for Reddit (an obvious first choice), Twitter, Tumblr, Youtube etc. And now we have ChangeTip Facebook working in perfect harmony! This is an interesting move, both for ChangeTip and Bitcoin community as well. Here’s why…
- Early adopter market was on Reddit — ChangeTip succeeded in that market. Good.
- Twitter — not big as Facebook — But has a lot of Internet Savvy users.
- Tumblr — again — not as big as Facebook. But a very social community.
- Facebook — by far the largest social network — something that even grandmas can use these days. Facebook is a successful case of a technology penetrating the mass market.
In their own voice and vision, ChangeTip views this Facebook integration in the following way:
“With over 1 billion users, enabling this on Facebook opens up a unique way to bring new people into bitcoin”.
This is great, as they never said, “we are taking ChangeTip to more people”, they say “we are bringing new people into bitcoin”.
So Bitcoin Is Entering The Mass Market Now?
This essentially means that Bitcoin as a currency and as a concept, is moving beyond the early adopters threshold and is now entering the Mass Market, albeit slowly. But this is surely a good start for the mass — Greater Bitcoin community. A few possible areas where ChangeTip Facebook Integration would be of great use are these:
- For incentivising users inside Facebook to post relevant and useful content.
- For motivating influencers to keep doing what they do best, beyond “just” likes and shares.
- For the non-profits to receive micro-support in few dollars of tips, each day.
Innovations like these, have the power to change behaviours, simply by empowering network and peer effects, which can sometimes change an entire industry, for ever. And we always wish to see more of that.
Author Note: At times, I wonder does the industry define the company or the companies define the industry. In the case of Bitcoins, it has always been the companies that define the industry.