Micropayments Firm TipJoy to Shut Down

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on August 24, 2009 - 8:23am.

Cambridge, Mass. - TipJoy, a micropayments platform for bloggers that had raised $1 million in venture capital financing, has shut down, PEHub.com reported, citing a post on the company's blog.

TipJoy will reportedly return the remainder of its funding to investors, who included BetaWorks, Y Combinator and Accelerator Group.

"When we evaluate why there's been so much hype about payments on Twitter, and yet so little traction for us (and even far less for our competitors) it is clear to us that the reason is that a 3rd party payment service doesn't add enough value," the company wrote on its blog.

"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."

Both TechCrunch and All Things D report that TipJoy was in talks with several firms to sell the company, including Facebook, but that Facebook reportedly walked away from the deal late in the process.

At the end of that process, however, Facebook managed to hire away TipJoy co-founder and chief technology officer Ivan Kirigin.

http://tipjoys2cents.blogspot.com/2009/08/so-long-and-thanks-for-all-fish.html

http://snipurl.com/qubvh (TechCrunch)

http://snipurl.com/quc0c (All Things D)

http://www.tipjoy.com