Collaborative Consumption: A tall frappuccino, please!

There is a tradition in Neapolitan coffee shops. When the cafes are full of white-collar workers in need of caffeine – taking their breaks and talking business – it just may so happen that instead just paying the bill, a client transform his change into a caffé sospeso (literally, coffee in suspense). It enables the poor with no cash to drink a coffee anyway. To do this, they simply ask the bartender if there’s a pre-paid coffee.

Caffé sospeso americano

This tradition has now crossed the Atlantic, thanks to an individual and a little technology. While testing an application allowing Jonathan Stark to link his Starbucks card to his phone, he was faced with a dilemma. The application is unusable on his iPhone and his Nexus at the same time. Cunningly, he took ​​a screenshot of the virtual card from the iPhone to use on his Nexus. Using the image at the counter, he managed to pay for his coffee.

Amazed to be able to pay with just a picture, he hastens to tell his readers on his blog on the morning of July 14 – with the image that let him to pay as an illustration. So the readers could verify his story, he credited his card with $30 and told them to try it out for themselves at their favorite Starbucks.

The virtual Starbucks card is quickly wiped clean, so he refills the card with $ 50 so that West Coasters get their turn. On July 15, a friend of Stark’s credits the card from the Starbucks website. July 18, he created an API to let people know how much money is left on the card. A webpage, a Twitter account and a Facebook page soon followed.

The little game of an American developer becomes a “social experiment”

A world where everyone gets free coffee does not exist. But fortunately, people are regularly crediting the card. The sweet life of the social experiment begins, highlighted both in the technophile media and on television. Jonathan Stark must be pleased with himself, as he always seems to find the time for an interview.

Others are jealous and suspect him to just be making a free advertising buzz for the largest coffee chain in the world. Yet that’s not it. The multinational put it simply:

Starbucks is unaware of Jonathan Stark’s project, and has no connection with him or the company he works for. Starbucks thinks that his project is interesting and we are flattered that he chose Starbucks as part of his experiment with ‘advance payment.’

It’s a nice story, and it has even inspired copycats. A certain Craig has also offered up his Starbucks card.

Hipsters buying hipsters coffee

However, the nice little story does not please everyone. Sam Odio, an entrepreneur exasperated by the good feelings from this experiment – “Other yuppies buy yuppies coffee” – decided to use Jonathan’s card and divert it from its original purpose.

So he created an application that notified him when the card in question contained a significant amount of money. He then went in to Starbucks and bought Starbucks cards with Jonathan’s card, and thus managed to accumulate 625 dollars.

He then auctioned off the 500 dollar card on eBay. The entire sum obtained will be donated to charity:

Am I alone in thinking that offering a stranger their next fix of caffeine is not what we should be concerned about?

Jonathan Stark’s reaction to the hack is similar to God’s after having given Earth to humans:

I only created the tool, there’s nothing to do. I think that people will get what’s coming to them, for better or for worse.

Due to the fact that Jonathan no longer credits his card and, in pure caffé suspeso style, we believe that those who buy a coffee with others’ money won’t hesitate to recredit the card later on.

[Update - 19:30] – During the evening of August 12, Jonathan’s card was disactivated, due to the actions of Sam Odio. On the website, Jonathan says it’s the beginning of something even bigger, and that people should no longer hesitate to pay in advance for others.

Initially published on the blog d’Alphoenix