links for 2010-03-21

Like the Force, Facebook can be a powerful ally — but beware the Dark Side. This is a tale of how a big company can land itself in a PR nightmare in a matter of minutes, all thanks to the power of social media.

For starters, every previous attempt at creating an online system for tipping has pretty much failed.  TipJoy is now defunct.  TipiT has minimal traffic and suspended its services while it deals with a massive fraud problem.  The little donate buttons we were supposed to click on to support our favorite bands as we gave the finger to the RIAA never panned out.  It turns out we really were just cheap bastards that didn’t want to pay for music after all.