Feedback: Tipping

Flattr is often described as a “virtual tipjar”. How come we haven’t featured a post about tipping yet? So, here you go:

Most of you here are using Flattr so probably you’re happy with the idea and you like to give. But what is behind the phenomenon of tipping? How did it all start?

We’ve found a nice podcast about the history and present of tipping, “offline”. Listen to The Friday Podcast: Why Do We Tip?

According to the podcast, the tipping industry has changed a lot during the past centuries; in fact, back in the day tipping was done in advance to make the service faster, now we do it after receiving the service for various reasons. Even if the weather has bigger affect on our willingness to tip than the service itself, we do tip. They’re discussing the reasons for this in the podcast as well, but it’s all about the real life. We still don’t know why we drop some money into virtual tipjars.

The best place to ask this is the people who already love the idea of giving money to appreciate others. So over to you: Why do you tip? Why do you use Flattr?

After all, I hope the weather is nice out there.

Image by Adobepillow on Flickr