On the subject of tipjoy, a useful option would be to allow people to just collect recipients that they are interested in giving to, and then split $10 or whatever between them at the end of the month. I think this would have two advantages: reduce the effect of Clay Shirky's micropayment decision cost problem, and allow people to budget more easily (which will make them less scared of giving money).
(I was thinking of doing this until I heard of tipjoy, curse you :-).
Another idea - I don't know how difficult this would be - would be to have some way for websites to give freebies to people who have tipped more than, say $5 in total to anyone that month. The website owners would get two benefits: people would be more likely to tip them, and they would get more traffic (because you would provide an 'if you liked this...' feature to sites who did that). This interacts well with the 'split $X at the end of the month' feature, because tippers would then round up in order to get the freebies.
On the subject of tipjoy, a useful option would be to allow people to just collect recipients that they are interested in giving to, and then split $10 or whatever between them at the end of the month. I think this would have two advantages: reduce the effect of Clay Shirky's micropayment decision cost problem, and allow people to budget more easily (which will make them less scared of giving money).
(I was thinking of doing this until I heard of tipjoy, curse you :-).