What do they mean TipJoy doesn't pay you real money? Isn't the money real as soon as the folks that decided to tip actually "pay their bill" to TipJoy?

They pay you in either Amazon gift cards or by donating to a charity. According to their FAQ, "if we allow our users to withdraw money from their account, then we are technically a money transfer service, which requires registration with all 50 states and with the Federal government (in compliance with the Patriot Act). All of that registration requires a very, very large amount of money which we don't yet have."

Interesting, so the Patriot act is an entry barrier for paypal? And people say politics don't impact geeks :)

It is a problem for a significant number of startups. But the increased difficulty of getting into the US is a worse one.

It isn't just the patriot act -- each state in the US has different requirements. That is what makes it expensive.

Ok. Amazon Gift Cards work just fine for me :)

As soon as we close a round of venture, we will be going through the process of licensing as a money transfer service, and allowing users to cash out directly.

I tried to leave a tip but nothing happened when I clicked 'Tip This' even after I enabled JavaScript. Does your site support Opera?

Yes, we've tested on opera. What OS are you using? What site were you trying to tip? Thanks for your feedback and patience!

Opera details:

  Version  9.50 Beta
  Build    4506
  Platform MacOS X
  System   10.5.2

Since Opera lets me manage preferences on a per-site basis, I normally run without anything like javascript or cookies enabled and only enable those features the site minimally needs.

Tipjoy minimally needs javascript and cookies. It's like most other new sites in that regard.

I was wondering when they would launch...