On Jonthan's Card

An incredible experiment in social sharing and generosity, Jonathan's Card offers a Starbucks Card to anyone who wants it. The card has two functions: it may pay for an individual's coffee products at Starbucks or it may be filled with an individual's money. The Card's balance is publicly available via API and may be tracked over the course of a day, week, or entire history. The project follows a supposedly Italian tradition of "Caffe Pagato" or "Caffe Sospeso"  in which coffees are paid for in advance for unknown future customers. This custom is considered an ideal of a generous society. Jonathan's Card, initiated by programmer Jonathan Stark, adapts the tradition for a digital society, adding a global potential (card can be used/filled by anyone, anywhere) to the formerly local occasion.

Articles

 * As of Aug. 8, this is absolutely blowing up. Here's an Atlantic article with good tech graph
 * PSFK Post

Research
I am incredibly interested in the people (users) who are powering this. Of course, we should celebrate the person who thought it up, and no doubt he will be celebrated and interviewed. But what about the people who are powering it. Let's learn a little more about them and why they did it.

In an effort to do just that, I've composed an incredibly brief set of 6 questions, four of which are multiple choice, and two are free response. I begun looking for participants on Twitter, by following the stream of people using "@jonathanscard" in their posts, but this is not very effective. More directly, I found a Facebook page for "Jonathan's Card" that appears to have been set up by Stark himself. Many people have posted there, talking about adding money or getting a beverage. Beginning at approx. 9:05 EST, I went through the posts there and sent messages about the survey to 10 people who had posted about adding credit or making a purchase. We'll see how that goes, and potentially try another set later this evening or this week. I think about 20 responses would be ideal.

This is really meant to be a 'snapshot' or 'lightweight' piece of media sociology. I'm really interested in just getting a sketch of people participating in this (i.e. how much they added/took, how old they are, what they got) and why they participated (what do they think of other users, what motivated this work).

Continuing
Response to the first set of random queries was super low (1/10), so I've followed back up with another 10 from the Facebook page. Just went through that growing archive of anger (against the hacking, an important second story to examine eventually) and hit 10 people who said that had used or given funds to the card. So that's a second sample from 4:45 EST on Aug 15, 2011.