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Idea

Pay to have your direct messages replied to by people who have overflowing inboxes

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Darko Savic

Darko Savic Jan 10, 2022

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Originality

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Feasibility

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Necessity

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Conciseness

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Bounty for the best solution

Provide a bounty for the best solution

Bounties attract serious brainpower to the challenge.

Pay per reply. Attach a cash bounty to your direct message to get a reply from a busy person with an overflowing inbox.
Why?
People are busy. I imagine that high-profile individuals are flooded with inbound messages they have no hope of sifting through. For them, the direct messaging function on any platform is unusable.
Put your money on the line if you are serious about reaching out to a high-profile individual who gets pestered with messages just like yours.
Incentivize people to spend their time reading what you have to say. They might not need the money or might not want to be contacted, but could find it amusing to see what people are willing to pay to have seen.
How it works
An add-on feature to direct messaging on any platform. 
The feature allows you to attach cash bounty to your direct message. The money is released to the recipient as soon as they reply, regardless of what they say. They get paid even if their reply consists of a single word..
The platform can opt to take a commission out of the bounty.
Auction system
The higher your cash bounty, the higher your message is positioned in the recipient's inbox.
When adding the bounty, you get to find out what spot your message has. You can increase/decrease the bounty at any time until it gets a reply.
DM inboxes that work even for VIP people
A high-profile individual could opt to have 10 DMs shown - arranged by the highest bounty.
If they don't want the money, they could set it up so that everything goes to charities of their choice or fund cool projects.
Options available to recipients
The recipient gets to dismiss a message regardless of the bounty (without getting paid). The sender doesn't get to find out if this happens. The recipient should be under no obligation to acknowledge a message.
An unsolved problem with this option is the fact that such a sender could attach an astronomical bounty but still not know that their message is being purposefully ignored. They could keep upping the bounty in hopes of being acknowledged.

messaging communication

1

Creative contributions

A review system to prevent recipients from easy money-grabbing

Povilas S

Povilas S Jan 11, 2022

Great idea Darko Savic! I'd suggest adding some sort of a review system to limit cases where busy recipients reply with only one word or type something random. If this happened to you after paying a bounty, you could leave a negative review and would have all the proofs - letters are there in your email box for anyone to read. 
The people about to place a bounty to get a reply from a busy person would see the review score, e.g. "based on user reviews this person has a 20% chance to reply with a nonsensical message". Once the score reached a certain level (say 30, 40, or 50 percent) the recipient would be banned from receiving bounties and might even be charged with a monetary fine. Also, if the person was famous enough, this would damage their image on social media and press, because the stories of him/her replying random stuff just to get some money would certainly leak there.

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General comments

Shubhankar Kulkarni

Shubhankar Kulkarni2 years ago

I like the idea although it comes with concerns that have already been mentioned. Regarding your concern stated in the last paragraph of the session text, currently, the message gets ignored since the recipient's inbox is overflowing with messages. The new idea does not change that, so, it is okay, I guess, not a grave concern.
I would also like a "cancel" function after which, even if the recipient replies, they won't get the bounty. They would be notified though, that the bounty has been canceled. I don't want to spend money two years after I had sent a mail if the recipient replies then.

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Darko Savic

Darko Savic2 years ago

Shubhankar Kulkarni Good point. The bounty is modifiable and cancellable anytime unless the recipient cashes it in before you were able to modify it.

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Spook Louw

Spook Louw2 years ago

I like the idea, I would definitely pay to reach certain people who never seem to reply. An unintended consequence of something like this, that needs to be considered, is it might lead to people purposefully not reading messages unless there is a bounty attached. This could make it even more difficult to reach people and put people with less money at even more of a disadvantage.

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jnikola

jnikola2 years ago

Really interesting idea and a business opportunity. That could also be a way how people could do the mass surveys, feedbacks, or online consulting could work. You add a small bounty next to a survey question, or a fixed predetermined fee along with your question for consulting advice.
The problem of attaching cash/crypto to mail/message
Maybe the biggest drawback could be the breachable email and messaging services. Did you think of an existing technology that could make this work? Something like an "e-check (cheque)" or a similar crypto-based alternative where you write a code from the mail and get your money? The real money attached to mail/message could be really insecure.
The problem of people with overflowing inboxes becoming even more unreachable
Now, when you send a message, it still eventually gets read by the recipient. But I am not sure that the same would happen when these "bounties" would be attached. Messages with no money would be totally neglected, right?

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