What is Digg?15 Comments
- cleverboy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7FYI, here's the text of the e-mail message I received as well:
---------------------------------------------------------------
FROM: "Bitpass Inc."
DATE: Jan 19, 2007 5:52 PM
SUBJECT: Bitpass is Discontinuing Service
Dear Valued Bitpass Buyer,
We want to thank you for your past business, however due to circumstances beyond our control, we are discontinuing our operations.
We have partnered with Digital River to provide operational support during the period prior to shut down. As of today, January 19, 2007, all Bitpass Buyers with US dollar denominated accounts are being notified that they will have seven (7) days to spend any amounts that currently exist in their Bitpass Account.
During this seven day period, US Buyers will not be able to further fund their account.
On January 26, all US Bitpass Buyer accounts will be closed and Digital River will begin the process of refunding all unspent monies to the accountholder.
All account records and materials will be retained for 60 days and available upon request.
Again we would like to thank you for your business and support.
Matthew Graves
Chief Operating Officer
Bitpass Inc.
--------------------------------------------------------------- - DeathBorn, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Interesting. Here's what I think abou
*To view the rest of this comment, please make a micropayment of $0.25* - cleverboy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2HIGHLIGHTS: As of Jan 19th (today), you now have 7 days to spend all your BitPass bucks.
Service shuts down totally on Jan 26th 2007, and refunds will be tallied by Digital River. - bostonvoip, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I'd give you my 2 cents...but not anymore.. =)
- Glidedon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@SPRFRKR
Does anyone ever go to your site? I wouldn't go there with a ten foot pole with a URL like that. - cleverboy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Well, I'm downloading their website while its still around. Should make for interesting case study material later on. I mean, I hadn't visited their site in ages, ever since Scott McCloud of "Understanding Comics" fame, offered a new multi-part web comic through them, at 25 cents an issue (and I'm not sure if he ever finished it). Is MicroPayments dead? Don't rightly know, but for some reason the Grim Reaper is tapping his foot and whistling.
- ruuk25, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Does anyone have any outside confirmation of this info (other than the email, which I also received). Maybe it's just me but I don't trust every email I receive =]
Though for the life of me I can't figure out a motive for faking this email other than just to mess with people. - zorroAstro, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It must be true; we had once created several different 'merchant' accounts with them, so we got an email for each.
- roxics, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Can somebody give us a recap of what the service was and how it worked? Are there other services like it?
- cleverboy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Not only that, but their forum (running phpBB and still linked from their website) has vanished (doesn't resolve any longer). I'm raiding Google cache for tech note tidbits right now. It's been as dead as archive.org says it was in April of last year, and the most recent messages (a la Google cache) are from spammers posting an assortment of topics entitled "what now" promoting p0rn links of Jessice Simpson (sic).
You get a distinct impression of how "out-of-touch" the
situation might be when you see links like this on the site:
"Get digital content rewards from MSN with
your Bitpass iMedia Account! Click here to
Set the Flutters Free! "
http://www.setthefluttersfree.com/Flutters/Home/
Just Microsoft dicking people around I guess.
I hate that type of flowery "promotional campaign" garbage.
Is DisneyOnline, TIME, abc, and ZiffDavis really using BitPass in any *significant* way?
http://www.bitpass.com/corp/customers/
Interestingly, I'm sure many of these are connected to each other through "ninemsn" (MSN's Austrailian portal). Of the companies listed, only "ninemsn" became a "case study", and the "results" section quoted the customer using the sentence "has the potential" in describing BitPass' "success" and benefits. I worked at a couple of companies that went out of business on high ideas and less than stellar results, back pre-9/11. The steam can only last so long. Sad but true. - MoneyShot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The only reason that Paypal became so dominant is because they used to pay people $5 to signup for a new account. Paypal bleed an ungodly amount of their investors cash just on this strategy.
The biggest thing that killed BitPass, IMHO, is that they required that you deposit at least $3 (I think) into your account when you signed up. Since most people would signup to so they could pay a merchant a penny or two (micropayment), this was moronic. I understand the fact that unless they charged $X, the credit card processing fees would put them in the negative. However, they should have been willing to lose extraordinary amounts of money at first--like Paypal. - ruuk25, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Just and update. The letter that was sent to everyone has now been posted on the Mperia home page (http://www.mperia.com), so I guess it is officially true.
- SPRFRKR, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2They were trying to help people monetize their digital content. One of the scenarios would be for you to pay $0.25 to view a comic or read an article. So really small payments for digital content is what they were pitching. The issue is that because the credit card companies have such high per transaction fees, the only way they could get away with buying things for such a small price would be to have users "pre-fund" their account with larger transaction amounts that would absorb the credit card fees. So you would basically put $5 into your BitPass account. Then you'd have to spend form that balance. A lot of people would just use it once or twice and have a lot of unspent money in their accounts.
There are a lot of similar services out there. I personally run this one:
https://www.payloadz.com - funk49, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0There are plenty of sites that have been doing micropayments for much longer. e-Gold has been doing it since 94-96, e-Bullion since 2000, GoldMoney since 01. Some have transfer fees, some don't.
This is just another case of a processor going down the tubes. Other that have include EVOCash, IntGold and the soon to be StormPay. - SPRFRKR, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1@Glidedon
Not to sound dismissive, but since your comment was towards me, then yes:
With 50,000 users selling 200,000+ product with an average transaction volume of 30,000 per week and a (albeit meaningless) Alex rank in the top 10,000 and a Compete.com rank in the same range, I'd say "yes" some people visit the site. I don't want to get in a pissing match over a domain name.
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