As a social experiment with mobile currency, Jonathan Stark is letting anyone use his Starbucks card to buy themselves a coffee…or, you know, buy someone else a coffee or two. And for every mention of @Socialize and @JonathansCard on Twitter, we’ll add $1 to the card, up to $5,000 by August 10. We’re hoping a little bit of free java will get y’all amped up for our $2,500 SDK challenge.
Here’s the description of the card from Jonathan’s site:
Jonathan’s Card is an experiment in social sharing of physical goods using digital currency on mobile phones. I stumbled on the idea while doing research for a blog post about Broadcasting Mobile Currency.
Based on the similarity to the “take a penny, leave a penny” trays at convenience stores in the US, I’ve adopted a similar “get a coffee, give a coffee” terminology for Jonathan’s Card.
As it turns out, this is actually a new take on a wonderful old italian custom called Caffe Pagato, which translates to English as “Coffee Paid”. Thanks to Francesco Pierfederici for alerting me to this article: Italian Lifestyle: the “caffe’ pagato” (paid coffee) Custom.
To check out the latest data on the card’s balance, you can follow the card on Twitter. And if you want us to add a dollar or two, just tweet at us (@Socialize) and the card (@JonathansCard).