By Nicole Fletcher, live from SXSW
The Jonathan behind the Starbucks card phenomenon talks about his pay it forward Starbucks card concept.
While he started out driving the bus of what became an overnight viral concept, he ended up- to his horrified dismay- strapped to the front of it. Viral by nature, this no rules no system concept took off like wildfire. Give a coffee, take a coffee- pretty simple concept right? Well simplicity seems to be key with American web consumers. With his lack of organization though, came mayhem and a ton of bad press. He set the record straight though in his sxsw talk .
“it was like playing a game with no rules but somehow we knew we were cheating”
He went on to talk about the launch of google wallet and the future of mobile payments. He expected to get a ton of backlash with respect to security issues but shockingly, of the $20k transactions the card saw in just a few days, only one person reached out regarding this issue. He says the future of mobile payment is bright and anonymous payment , aka cash, is dead and dying. Pretty interesting concept actually as I never thought of cash as anonymous but it really is…
He launched another card at SXSW – you know – techies gotta have their coffee too and hopes for similar results with less hulabaloo of course.
That’s it in a nut shell and I really hope this social good , simple pay it forward concept kicks into high gear and we continue to use the web for good… Despite road blocks the do gooders face.
In happiness and paying it forward.
Nicole