Do you feel the same about donating to a free software project? Donating to a cool software service? Donating to NPR?

The point is that we're not necessarily talking about "tips" in the sense of "additional personal gratuity on top of an existing purchase". Very often, in this context, it involves making a donation towards efforts of someone you appreciate as, perhaps, the sole means of funding a project.

I agree that I probably wouldn't be so keen on a service that encourages tipping people during an existing transaction. For example, I likely wouldn't tip a tech support rep for a company I host through (well, unless they went above and beyond in an overwhelming way).

But I sure as hell think it's great to be able to pay a little to those who otherwise get absolutely nothing (other than a bit of respect).

Just as I might buy lunch at work for a coworker who saved me a lot of time out of their generosity, I'd like to periodically pay back those who make my life easier out of the kindness of their hearts.

For this purpose, I think TipJoy is one of the best alternatives I've seen for online "appreciation" donations. We plan to leverage it on our sites where it makes sense.

It's really all about how you describe the service. Tipjoy is all about dead-simple voluntary patronage of digital content. Patronage is a millennia old model for creative content generation.

Also, tipping isn't anonymous. Here is a list of things I've tipped. http://tipjoy.com/userstream/ivankirigin/

We're going to push this information as far as we can because the social side is so important.

"If I anonymously tip some blogger, what do I get? Nothing!"

What about getting more of the kind of content that you enjoyed?

  If I tip in a restaurant, it's because I want to be remembered.

So you never tip at a restaurant to which you're not going to return? (Suppose you're dining at a restaurant while traveling.) Besides, the chance that you're going to be "remembered" for leaving 15% (or 20%) at a typical restaurant is minuscule. The same goes for leaving $1 in the tipjar at a coffee shop.

I think you completely misunderstand the purpose of tipping. People tip because: (1) it is a social convention; they feel they are expected to, and the wages of people in service industries are structured to assume tipping occurs (2) they want to show appreciation for having a service performed. The first is not (yet) a factor for online tipjars, but the latter is still applicable.

Me not American, so your tipping culture does not apply to me.

Neither am I -- but I am from a culture where tipping is a social convention.

It should be possible to implement "freemium" content using something like TipJoy. All you need is infrastructure that will remember a setting for you where you can set (even smaller) micropayments to be automatic for visits to certain sites. Then the content owners can read your preference and turn on other content. I could imagine doing this for a bunch of webcomics that I read.