{"id":8372,"date":"2019-03-09T12:11:50","date_gmt":"2019-03-09T12:11:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/the-chat-room-where-you-pay-by-the-letter\/"},"modified":"2019-03-09T12:11:50","modified_gmt":"2019-03-09T12:11:50","slug":"the-chat-room-where-you-pay-by-the-letter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/the-chat-room-where-you-pay-by-the-letter\/","title":{"rendered":"The chat room where you pay by the letter"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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<\/p>\n

\"screengrabImage copyright<\/span>
\n Expensive Chat<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

An entrepreneur has launched an online chat platform where users pay $0.01 (\u00a30.0075) per character for the messages they share with the community.<\/p>\n

Marc K\u00f6hlbrugge described the service as a social experiment. <\/p>\n

At time of writing there are about 100 people using it and $335 has been spent so far.<\/p>\n

Most of the messages appear to be in Russian. There are also a few calling for subscribers to PewdiePie’s YouTube channel in an ongoing ratings battle.<\/p>\n

The site adds up the cost of the message as it is typed and card details are required before it is posted.<\/p>\n

There does not appear to be any moderation and some of the links being shared look like spam.<\/p>\n

Mr K\u00f6hlbrugge told the website Motherboard<\/a> that he had initially created Expensive Chat “as a fun way to make some extra money” and he intended to keep the cash spent by users himself.<\/p>\n

However, he added that he thought the product had potential for celebrities and influencers to host chats with the money going to charity.<\/p>\n

Mr K\u00f6hlbrugge has also tweeted PayPal creator Elon Musk to ask if he would like to “join the chat” and split the profits.<\/p>\n

Currently most online message boards are free to post on and while some sites may charge subscriptions, the length of the message is not a factor in the cost.<\/p>\n

Kate Bevan, editor of Which? Computing magazine, said she thought the idea was interesting.<\/p>\n

“I can see how it could be turned into a useful tool for a number of people and businesses looking to monetise their content,” she told BBC News. <\/p>\n

“However, I’d urge anyone thinking of implementing this kind of tool to make sure that their users are absolutely clear that they’re about to use a paid-for service and that the charges are transparent so that users know what kind of costs they could rack up.”<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n


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Source<\/a> by [author_name]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Image copyright Expensive Chat An entrepreneur has launched an online chat platform where users pay $0.01 (\u00a30.0075) per character for the messages they share with the community. Marc K\u00f6hlbrugge described the service as a social experiment. At time of writing there are about 100 people using it and $335 has been spent so far. Most … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":8373,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8372\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}