It was only a matter of clock time before junk e-mail came to Venmo and , candidly , it ’s amazing that it took so long to estimate out the marketing secret : you’re able to message anyone on Venmo , so long asyou send them as little as one cent .
Or , perhaps other companies reckon it out much earlier and decided that this was a bad marketing scheme . Not theWaterIsLifecharity , which sent one cent to people seem in its feed , along with creepy-crawly messages . For example , grant to TechCrunch , if you Venmoed money for pizza , WaterIsLife would air that somebody one penny with a caption like “ 1 cent ca n’t bribe you pizza . But for just 3 cents , you may buy someone unobjectionable water for a day . ” How much can I pay to ensure nobody post me message like this ?
It work , at least a little : WaterIsLife did n’t say how much it drop on the campaign , but it did receive $ 400 in donations on the first twenty-four hours . The relaxation of us can now live in fear that other byplay will be suit , ormake our accounts privateso we do n’t show up on other people ’s feeds . ( Venmo did not immediately reply to comment asking whether it plan to block this type of aggregated dealings . )
It ’s not that being inquire for donations — peculiarly from a unobjectionable water Greek valerian — is a bad thing . We ’re all used to“give us money ” plea on social medium platforms , enough so that Facebook isembedding Jacob’s ladder fundraising directly into the site .
But WaterIsLife cause feels unexpected and personal . We ’re used to seeing everyone ’s Kickstarter effort , but that ’s a worldwide plea , not an unsettling personalized substance that point people for their frivolous purchases and cue us yet again that we ’re under surveillance .
It ’s certainly true that buying clean water is usually a better utilization of money than buying a slice of artichoke pizza , and perhaps we should all have thicker tegument and stomach to be prompt of that . But money is already an incredibly fraught and emotionally complicated topic , and request for money from strangers , no matter how worthy the reason , should be process delicately . If this catches on across Venmo , it ’ll make the app , and the delicious voyeurism of its newsworthiness provender , a lot less appealing .
On the other hired man , this loophole can for certain be used for great amusement . Be correctly back , everyone , I have some choice one - cent message to send out some folks .
[ TechCrunch ]
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