p @tipjoy $

Over the summer, I posted a well distributed article called "How Twitter Will be Worth $1.5 Billion by Next Year." Go read it. I outlined the schema where one would send money to friends via Twitter using the format "p innonate $5" much like people "d" for a direct message.

Today, my friends at TipJoy realized this vision by announcing the exact* functionality.

Hip hip hooray!

*When I say exact, there's a big nuance to remember.

With TipJoy's integration -- because it's not truly on Twitter's side -- you must put an "@" before the person's name. I proposed a system without the "@," again, much like "d" works for direct messages. Nonetheless, it's a small difference and immaterial.

The material difference with my idea is that it's not Twitter doing it, but a third party, which makes adoption more of an uphill battle. As I said in my post over the summer:

If Twitter had a P2P payments system in place today, it would become the most used mobile payments system overnight. Having the ability to send a message like “p innonate $5? for that beer I just bought you would integrate seamlessly with the way Twitter’s users already interact with their system.

Layering on a payments system would not only make the feature instantly used, it would position Twitter to revolutionize how money is collected and exchanged on the Internet (think of what Twitter’s done for flashmobs and how it could effect fundraising).

But TipJoy can do it! I know the team and they're poised to conquer.

Lastly, to give credit where credit is due, I was excited to also see similar functionality coming from TwitPay a few weeks ago. It was also quite humbling to hear that my initial post inspired them to work on it!

I love all this innovation.