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TipJoy Inc. has shut its doors, co-founder Ivan Kirigin reported in a blog post late last night.
Funded by Paul Graham’s startup incubator, Y Combinator, in 2008, TipJoy aimed to provide a social online micropayment system that could be used to make blog content profitable. By integrating with Twitter to allow users to make small payments via microblog post, its founders hoped the system could be used in small transactions for digital goods across the web.
The company planned to draw revenue by taking a cut of the proceeds.
Users with balances on the system will still be able to sign in and cash out funds, the company said, but the site’s other functionality is turned off.
Micropayments will still be an important part of sharing online content, Kirigin said, but he and co-founder Abby Kirigin (the two are married) discovered a third-party provider like Tipjoy did not add enough value.
“We strongly believe that social payments will work on a social network, provided that they’re done within the platform and not as a 3rd party,” Kirigin wrote, adding that this will be the only way for a micropayment system to gain traction. “Then all people wanting to operate on that platform would have to play along.”
Concurrent with shutting down the site, the two co-founders have moved to the west cost, Ivan Kirigin told Mass High Tech in an email. Early this year, Y Combinator announced plans to close its East Coast program, formerly headquartered in Boston, and focus on incubating West-Coast-based startups.
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