[GiftEconomy] Contact from top 500 website

[Robin Upton]

I just got contacted by an investor in a cam4.com, a site which streams
(adult) video between users. It used to be completely free, but they
have just moved to a gift economy model. i.e. The site sell tokens to
the audience who can use these to tip the performers. The best
performers are getting something like $70/hour, he said. He contacted me
for strategies to increase the amount of tipping.

I see two areas of interest here:-

1) Moving from just porn to other services which could be provided over
a webcam, c.f. performance art, consulting, teaching, etc. This could be
a way of preparing people for a gift economy mindset, as well as
undercutting commercial provision of these services. I pointed him to
Money as Debt, with the hope that he would get a bigger picture angle on
this.

2) They have so much traffic, (>3 billion pageviews/month!) so that
there is a potential for designed experiments on factors influencing
gifting. I pointed him to http://www.altruists.org/f885 and
http://www.altruists.org/ae605 off the top of my head. They are already
thinking along these lines. Could be a good chance to research GUI aspects.

Any thoughts?

Robin