Ever had the urge to tip someone off about his big butt, lack of skills on the dance floor or obtrusive body odor? Are you too shy to compliment someone on her body, fresh breath or fashionable style? If so, you are in luck.
Just go to JustaTip.com to send a completely anonymous message to anyone on just about any subject. Tippers can secretly notify an acquaintance of his unappreciated flatulence and compliment another on her "commendable crotch hygiene" - we kid you not - through this clandestine Internet service.
And those shy ones who use the website have Tom Dixon '02 and Sean Macisaac '02 to thank. Dixon and Macisaac, along with two other friends, Alex Sundstrom and Howard Lerman - both students at Duke - created the website last summer, but the concept dates much further back.
As students at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Virginia, Lerman and Dixon would prank call strangers claiming to be from "Body Odor Products Anonymous," hired by friends to notify them of their bad body odor.
One evening during Dixon's sophomore year, he and Lerman were reminiscing over the old days through instant messaging when Lerman suggested a website with the same purpose as BOPA. "We thought it was hilarious," Dixon said, adding that they considered it as a "half joke, half serious thing." But soon the discussion became more serious than comic.
"Howard thought of it first," Dixon noted. "Sean was my roommate sophomore year, and we work together on a software consulting company, so once Howard and I came up with the idea I asked him to join us." Lerman, who met Sundstrom at Duke, asked him to join as well.
The site was a hit from the very beginning and soon two companies offered to buy out the four young entrepreneurs. According to Dixon, one proposal came from a "smaller private web company" who had offered $200,000 for the site and the other came from a "lab company inside a publicly-traded web company" who offered to pay them a monthly fee based on how well the site did. That company's conservative estimate for the payments was about $1.4 million, Dixon said.
Though these deals both fell through, the larger of the two had dragged out for two months, during which many other Internet companies disintegrated. This, Dixon said, is one reason why JustaTip survived the fall of the "dot coms."
Nevertheless, the precarious market and dissolution of the deals still affected the business. "That definitely hurt us," said Dixon. "After that happened, we lowered our expectations a lot."
Finally, the four agreed to sign a deal with Traffix, a database marketing and management company that still manages the site. "We actually worked with them a lot. They're very receptive [to our ideas]," Dixon said.
Traffix will pay Dixon and his coworkers a total of $150,000. "So far, we've seen about half of that," Dixon said, adding that he plans to split his share of the cash pretty evenly "between reckless spending and trying to save."
Now millions of people can notify others of their good penmanship or bad fishing skills. And this tipping phenomenon has not passed over Princeton. Many students receive "joke tips" from their friends and family.
"My best friend wrote me an e-mail telling me that my toupee was the wrong color and falling off," Regin Tanler '04 said. (She has a full head of her natural hair of course.) "She thought that was hysterical. She also sent one to her roommate, condemning her illegal flame thrower."
Lauren Nichols '04 said she shares Tanler's view and has also received similarly teasing tips. "My younger brother - he's 13 - thinks nothing is more fun than sending me tips," she said amusedly. "I think they're funny, since I know he gets a kick out of sending them to me, and I always know they're from him."
But do Macisaac and Dixon feel guilty knowing that JustaTip also has the capacity to hurt people's feelings? Not completely, they said, noting that that is not the proper use of the service they provide.
"Like pretty much any service, it can be used to be mean, [but] it certainly is intended to be funny," Dixon explained. "It is used almost entirely to that purpose. Across the board it is used as a joke."
MacIsaac agreed, "Often the ones I've gotten as compliments I take as more offensive." They sound less sarcastic than the critical tips, he explained.
"The appropriate direction is sarcastic," Dixon added, noting that when they received complaints through the feedback feature on the site, most of the people were annoyed rather than offended. "Everyone pretty much thinks it is a joke," he said.
The entrepreneurs themselves have received tips, but have they sent them?
"Yeah," Dixon replied. "Mostly among ourselves." The four are also completing another website called Ratensee.com based on a similar concept to JustaTip. At Ratensee people will be able to rate each other on subjects such as physical attractiveness and fashion sense.
"It should be up by next week," Dixon said - just a tip to those awaiting a new way to procrastinate.
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