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<br /> Do you ever wonder what it would be like if we have a <keyword id="6354576" type="CITY" weightage="80" keywordseo="Facebook">Facebook</keyword> for <keyword id="504808" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="100" keywordseo="Foodies">foodies</keyword>? <keyword id="6354630" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Mark-Zuckerberg">Mark Zuckerberg</keyword> hasn’t started one yet, but an Indian-origin start-up has come up with a social platform for <keyword id="2067882" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Recipe-sharing">recipe sharing</keyword>. Meet <keyword id="2067846" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="Cucumbertown">Cucumbertown</keyword>.com, a delightfully simple <keyword id="2067867" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Recipe-blogging-platform">recipe blogging platform</keyword> that connects <keyword id="2067869" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Amateur-cooks">amateur cooks</keyword> and <keyword id="2067871" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Pro-chefs">pro chefs</keyword> with the foodies of the world. On this fast-growing <keyword id="6354615" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="100" keywordseo="Social-network">social network</keyword>, users can publish their recipes without the least hassle and browse through the entire repository of <keyword id="2067874" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Gourmet-creations">gourmet creations</keyword> and <keyword id="2067875" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Culinary-delights">culinary delights</keyword>. However, it is the ‘social’ part that puts one’s <keyword id="1527920" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="cooking-skills">cooking skills</keyword> to test. There is a rating system used by the Cucumbertown tribe that effectively makes out whether a recipe is good, average or bad.<br />
<br /> But what intrigues one most on this recipe <keyword id="1188271" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="publishing-platform">publishing platform</keyword> is the ease of use. On Cucumbertown, one can write a recipe in a standard format, add images/multimedia and upload everything with a few clicks. Once your ‘post’ is up, the social platform starts buzzing with <keyword id="824939" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="opinions">opinions</keyword>, <keyword id="6400508" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Conversations">conversations</keyword> and ‘<keyword id="31407" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="craves">craves</keyword>’ (similar to <keyword id="1110433" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Facebook-likes">Facebook Likes</keyword>). You can also follow your favourite cook/s and get customised notifications when content is published by your friends. Well, of course, <keyword id="629729" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Epicurious">Epicurious</keyword> has it all, but Cucumbertown is aiming even higher and wants to be the <keyword id="279713" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="Tumblr">Tumblr</keyword> in <keyword id="2067884" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Cooking-and-food-space">cooking and food space</keyword>. Here is a snapshot that captures the start-up’s vision and viability.<br />
<br />
<strong>Who runs Cucumbertown (www.cucumbertown.com): </strong>A team of four co-founders, hailing from three continents (two from <keyword id="6355033" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="Bangalore">Bangalore</keyword>, one from <keyword id="57516" type="COMPANY" weightage="80" keywordseo="Zurich">Zurich</keyword> and one from Pennsylvania). In fact, none of them had met each other during the build-up period. <keyword id="5645" type="POSITION" weightage="80" keywordseo="CEO">CEO</keyword> <keyword id="326430" type="PERSON" weightage="100" keywordseo="Cherian-Thomas">Cherian Thomas</keyword> worked with <keyword id="188699" type="COMPANY" weightage="80" keywordseo="Zynga">Zynga</keyword> before setting up Cucumbertown in 2012. Other three co-founders include <keyword id="238078" type="POSITION" weightage="100" keywordseo="CTO">CTO</keyword> <keyword id="2067847" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Arun-Prabhakar">Arun Prabhakar</keyword> who had earlier worked with several Indian start-ups such as <keyword id="736993" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="taggle">Taggle</keyword> and TutorVista; <keyword id="2067892" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Chris-Lscher">Chris Lüscher</keyword>, founding partner at <keyword id="2067891" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Information-Architects">Information Architects</keyword>, one of the world’s leading design firms, and <keyword id="2067853" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Dan-Hauk">Dan Hauk</keyword>, <keyword id="2067932" type="POSITION" weightage="100" keywordseo="theme-designer">theme designer</keyword> of <keyword id="825836" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="80" keywordseo="Wordpress">WordPress</keyword>, Tumblr and the likes. Dan left the start-up in August 2013, but still helps whenever he can.<br />
<br /> Although Cherian calls it a labour of love, he is hell-bent on building a <keyword id="2067893" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="global-product">global product</keyword>. The Bangalorean has sought world-class talent and built a strong team – one that has a good understanding of the <keyword id="35145" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="global-market">global market</keyword> and is totally aware of the challenges to be faced. The start-up currently operates from <keyword id="108002" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="Mountain-View">Mountain View</keyword> (<keyword id="2379" type="CITY" weightage="100" keywordseo="California">California</keyword>) and Bangalore.<br />
<br />
<strong>What inspired the venture: </strong>Pure passion. A die-hard foodie who loves to <keyword id="9230" type="PERSON" weightage="100" keywordseo="Cook">cook</keyword>, Cherian has always wanted to blog about cooking, but it turned out to be a cumbersome process. Creating a blog, <keyword id="97496" type="PERSON" weightage="100" keywordseo="Writing">writing</keyword> &amp; uploading recipes and putting up images/videos on the site require a lot of technical knowledge. That’s when he realised how difficult it must be for cooks and chefs who may not be tech savvy. “So I decided to build a user-friendly platform, contacted the best guys to help me out and here we are,” reflects Cherian.<br />
<br />
<strong>What’s the pitch: </strong>Cucumbertown aims to be the ‘Tumblr’ for cooking and food space. It offers an attractive alternative to posting recipes and food-related content on WordPress, Tumblr, <keyword id="58677" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Blogger">Blogger</keyword> and so on. The start-up provides an easy-to-use interface for publishing recipes – so that even an amateur cook can gain traction online and wow readers by sharing his/her culinary creations. “We all know what blogging has done to content publishing. Cucumbertown can do the same in cooking &amp; food space, and leverage the potential of <keyword id="1175407" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Internet-commerce">Internet commerce</keyword> in the process,” the CEO says.<br />
<br />
<strong>How it works: </strong>Cucumbertown is to cooking what Tumblr is to blogging and keeping things easy is the start-up’s USP. One can log in via Facebook or create a new account before using the site. Once there, you can publish recipes, upload images and search the <keyword id="2067873" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Recipe-database">recipe database</keyword> by cook, cuisine, course, <keyword id="493272" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Ingredient">ingredient</keyword>, <keyword id="2067917" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Cooking-time">cooking time</keyword> and <keyword id="2067918" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Difficulty-level">difficulty level</keyword>. Search results can be listed based on relevance, popularity or comments. Publishing on the site is especially easy as Cucumbertown provides a plethora of tools, including a <keyword id="2067859" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="recipe-editor">recipe editor</keyword>. Moreover, if a recipe is already up, you can post a different version, showing your culinary creativity.<br />
<br />
<strong>Claim to fame: </strong>Traction and global reach-out. The company claims it is one of the fastest growing food <keyword id="50752" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="80" keywordseo="Networks">networks</keyword>, with users from around 40 countries. And right now, it is eyeing further expansion in the US and Europe. Interestingly, Cucumbertown is one of the heavily funded pre-revenue start-ups and has raised money from the same <keyword id="6359051" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="investors">investors</keyword> who had funded companies such as Facebook, <keyword id="6354616" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Twitter">Twitter</keyword>, Zynga and <keyword id="6355629" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Google">Google</keyword>. Till date, the start-up has raised $300K in <keyword id="948731" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="seed-funding">seed funding</keyword>. Its key investors include <keyword id="1452668" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="500-Startups">500 Startups</keyword>, <keyword id="2067923" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Naval-Ravikant">Naval Ravikant</keyword> of <keyword id="1922133" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="AngelList">AngelList</keyword>, <keyword id="2067926" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Farmville-co-creator">Farmville co-creator</keyword> <keyword id="2067925" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Sizhao-Zao-Yang">Sizhao Zao Yang</keyword>, <keyword id="2067927" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Maneesh-Arora">Maneesh Arora</keyword> of <keyword id="1734576" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="MightyText">MightyText</keyword>, <keyword id="2067860" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="80" keywordseo="Richard-Chen">Richard Chen</keyword> (ex-Google PM), <keyword id="2067928" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Sonique-Player-co-creator">Sonique Player co-creator</keyword> <keyword id="2067848" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="80" keywordseo="Tabreez-Verjee">Tabreez Verjee</keyword> and <keyword id="2067850" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="80" keywordseo="Mokriya">Mokriya</keyword> founder-CEO <keyword id="2067849" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="80" keywordseo="Sunil-Kanderi">Sunil Kanderi</keyword>, among others.<br />
<br />
<strong>Show me the money: </strong>As an early consumer Web start-up that emulates <keyword id="6357722" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="silicon-valley">Silicon Valley</keyword>, Cucumbertown is yet to have a solid monetisation model. “In fact, we will look at revenue generation in 3-4 years from now,” says Cherian. “We are now following a similar model that Twitter, Facebook and others pursued, which means we are currently focusing on how the product evolves and gets accepted in the global market. That’s what our investors also want – once the product gets the final shape, money will come in,” he adds.<br />
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Cucumbertown has immense growth potential though, as the food and cooking space is getting bigger month on month. For instance, in November last year, 41% Americans visited such websites, up 2 million in terms of unique visitors from October 2013. These numbers won’t go down all of a sudden and the start-up can expect more traction when it starts expanding this year.<br />
<br />
<strong>Biggest challenge: </strong>Scaling to <keyword id="6409094" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="International-Markets">international markets</keyword>, especially non-English markets like <keyword id="87" type="COUNTRY" weightage="80" keywordseo="Germany">Germany</keyword>, while maintaining content and image quality. “We are a small team building a very big product. So we are not thinking about break-even or revenues at this point. The <keyword id="6357455" type="EVENT" weightage="100" keywordseo="Funding">funding</keyword> we raised would last for a while. Meanwhile, we must ensure that our users have the <keyword id="2067933" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="best-publishing-tools">best publishing tools</keyword>. That way, they will keep coming back to us and the <keyword id="1413000" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="User-base">user base</keyword> will grow manifold,” explains Cherian.<br />
<br />
<strong>A word for wannapreneurs: </strong>If you have the passion, go for it. And don’t let failures discourage you. In India, shutting down your business may seem like a disaster, but things are quite different across the globe and especially in Silicon Valley. So many people have failed here, but they have found the courage and the means to start up all over again. Both our entrepreneurs and investors should grow a robust <keyword id="170907" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="risk-appetite">risk appetite</keyword> and must have <keyword id="2067937" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Risk-tolerance">risk tolerance</keyword>. Moreover, we should give our ventures adequate time, so that they can generate value in the long run.

This Social Network Presents Amateur
Cooks & Pro Chefs; Wants To Be A Tumblr For Foodies

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Zulie Rane is a content creator who has more than 80,000 followers on Medium. </li><li>Rane says that the first dollar is the hardest to earn online, and then tried five ways to do it.</li></ul><p>I'm done. </p><p>I'm done with these garbage YouTube tutorials that claim to show you how to "easily earn $300 per day just by clicking links/typing words/using Google." They're always clickbait, and I always hate them.</p><p>So I decided to write an actual actionable guide on how to earn your first dollar online. And crucially, I've tested all of these. These all really work. I included screenshots as proof. </p><p>It's obviously possible to earn a lot more than just a dollar, but I find for many beginners, it's a mindset shift. Once you earn your first dollar, you can go on to earn your second, hundredth, thousandth, and so on. But that first dollar is the hardest.</p><h2>So let's get into <strong>five ways to earn your first dollar online  —  </strong>that I have tested</h2><p>What do you need to earn your first dollar online?</p><p>To earn your first dollar online, you will typically need a few things, aside from an internet connection:</p><ul><li>An audience. This can be readers subscribed to your newsletter or an existing audience on a platform like Instagram you access through an algorithm.</li><li>A product. This is what you're going to sell. </li><li>A seller. This is who's paying you for selling the thing to an audience. </li></ul><p>You can spoof the "audience" element to some degree. For example, if I know about SEO or virality, I can post a video to YouTube that will get me sales through the pre-existing YouTube audience, even if it's my very first video online and I don't have any followers.</p><p>But the other two are non-negotiable.</p><p>Let's look at five uncommon ways to earn your very first dollar online. In each section, I'll say what the audience, product, and seller are. I'll also explain how to maximize your earnings. These are listed in order of easiness. </p><h2>1. Play games on your phone</h2><p>It sounds too good to be true, isn't it? And yet I earned $1.50 (as Amazon gift cards) by playing Farmville-style games on my phone. </p><p>Now admittedly, this isn't a lot of money. But if you're just looking to get your feet wet with the idea of earning money online, playing games is a decent way to do it.</p><p>Here's the proof:</p><div type="image" title="ZulieRanescreenshot" height="58" width="1500" msid="100039013" hostid="261" sizebytes="7624"></div><p>I've reviewed how to do this <a href="https://www.zuliewrites.com/blog/i-tried-4-apps-that-claim-you-earn-money-playing-games-i-only-kept-one" target="_blank" rel="noopener">in my article here</a>. </p><ul><li>The audience: you.</li><li>What you're selling: your attention.</li><li>Who's buying: the company that makes the game.</li></ul><p>The business model is to get more people playing the game so the developers earn money either through selling in-game currency or by getting you to watch ads. </p><p>I earned three 50-cent Amazon gift cards. (I spent them on cat toys, of course.)</p><p>You can maximize your earnings by just playing a ton of games. Pick ones you like, and just enjoy yourself. </p><h2>2. Be a paid digital guinea pig</h2><p>Back in my college days, one of my all-time favorite websites was User Testing. I just logged back in today to ensure it's still viable and was pleased to be able to take two tests and earn twenty bucks in just a few minutes.</p><p>All you have to do is join, fill out your profile, take screening tests, and then run through the tasks they set you up if you're approved. Today, I did one on an email marketing tool, and another on some kind of digital phone pass. </p><p>Audience: you.</p><p>Selling: your user experience.</p><p>Buyer: Companies with new websites/apps they want to be tested.</p><div type="image" title="ZulieRaneScreenshot" height="316" width="1500" msid="100039016" hostid="261" sizebytes="6164"></div><p>Here's how to maximize your earnings: </p><ul><li>Always keep your browser open. It makes a "ding" noise when there's a new test.</li><li>Download the app and extra browsers to maximize your odds of qualifying.</li><li>Talk out loud during the test. Companies like it when they understand what you're thinking.</li><li>Be honest. You'll have to be screened for these tests. Don't lie to try to better fit the options. </li></ul><p>This is one of my favorite options. You'll never make millions, but it's a lot of fun and it's good money. I made $20 in thirty minutes, which works out to a decent hourly rate.</p><h2>3. Get people to click on links</h2><p>No, don't worry, you're not a hacker. These aren't shady links. Basically, it works like this:</p><ol><li>Say a company called Pet Supplies Co wants to promote its new YouTube video. </li><li>The company wants people to click on its video, so it can sell a new line of cat food. </li><li>The company hires a bunch of creators to post the link online. </li><li>I nab my custom, trackable URL from Pet Supplies Co, maybe something like youtube.com/participles/zulie_video. </li><li>I post an article talking about how much I love Pet Supplies Co's new YouTube video because of the cute cats in it.</li><li>You click on the video.</li><li>That click is tracked through my custom link.</li><li>I earn a very small amount of money, maybe like $0.10, just for that click.</li><li>Nine other people do that.</li><li>I earn $1.00. </li></ol><p>In short, you are using an audience (whether your own, or using SEO, or social media algorithms) to sell clicks to a company that wants attention.</p><p>Pet Supplies Co will work with some kind of middleman that connects creators like me to companies like Pet Supplies Co. In the past, I've used GetYrl, but other alternatives include <a href="https://adsy.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Adsy</a> or <a href="https://shrinkearn.com/payout-rates" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Shrinkearn</a>. </p><div type="image" title="Zulie Rane" height="974" width="1500" msid="100039018" hostid="261" sizebytes="23916"></div><p>You can maximize this by:</p><ol><li>Posting the link in a lot of different places.</li><li>Posting the link in a piece of content you hope will go viral.</li></ol><p>It's not a lot of money, but it can be your first dollar online.</p><h2>4. Go affiliate</h2><p>In the previous example, you don't have to make any sales. You just have to get clicks. The tradeoff is you don't have to get anyone to buy anything, but you earn less money because a click is obviously less valuable than a purchase.</p><p>Affiliate links use the same mechanisms, but go a step further — you're asked to actually get readers to buy something. The benefit is the rates are normally higher. </p><p>For example, my favorite affiliate program is Bookshop.org. You get a 10% commission for every purchase made through your affiliate link. </p><p>Here's the proof:</p><div type="image" title="Zulie Rane 3" height="474" width="1128" msid="100039020" hostid="261" sizebytes="15864"></div><p>You will share this link with your <strong>audience of interested readers</strong>. You are selling <strong>book recommendations</strong>. You are being paid <strong>by Bookshop</strong>, in exchange for sending book buyers to them. </p><p>The best way to maximize this is to niche down. You can find affiliate programs in pretty much any niche. The closer the niche fit, the more money you'll earn.</p><p>Post content in your niche and include links. When people buy, you'll earn a commission.</p><ul><li>Pets: <a href="https://affiliate.insider.com?h=61781511aa45a6565b69330c3b6e0e8e295e9859f480ff45e157e3de2f3a5989&amp;postID=64554fe032953073c315b36a&amp;site=bi&amp;u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.chewy.com%2Fapp%2Fcontent%2Faffiliate" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Chewy's affiliate program</a>, 4%. You'd have to make a sale of $25 to earn your first dollar.</li><li>Fashion: <a href="https://www.shein.in/affiliate-a-427.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Shein</a>, 10%-20%. You'd have to make a sale of $5-$10 to get your first dollar. </li><li>Stationery: <a href="https://affiliate.insider.com?h=55bce1dd850d91c91518df415c73c7a364fcab2f31b127569869171fce2dc230&amp;postID=64554fe032953073c315b36a&amp;site=bi&amp;u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.paperculture.com%2Faffiliates.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Paper Culture</a>, 10%-12%. You'd have to make a sale of $8–$10 to get your first dollar. </li><li>General: <a href="https://affiliate.insider.com?h=5827b245a6af12ad657507f05ee064d8b919c9a1db13907da7d0e1d20ae842df&amp;postID=64554fe032953073c315b36a&amp;site=bi&amp;u=https%3A%2F%2Faffiliate-program.amazon.com%2F" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Amazon</a>, "up to" 10%. You'd have to make a sale of at least $10 to get your first dollar. </li></ul><p>There are tons. Search your favorite brand + "affiliate program" and see what comes up.</p><p>Note: always disclose when something is an affiliate link. It's the law!</p><h2>5. Build a (small) email list and sell something</h2><p>If you've tried options 1–4, you're ready for option 5. You are going to build a small email list, create something that solves a problem, and sell it.</p><p>This is the hardest one, but also the most 1) rewarding and 2) scalable income source.</p><p>There's this misconception that you need a huge email list to make money. But you don't. Really, you just need one subscriber. </p><div type="image" title="ZulieRane" height="684" width="424" msid="100039021" hostid="261" sizebytes="8336"></div><h2>Here's how it works:</h2><ol><li><p><strong>Build a list.</strong> You can do this by posting content on any platform (blog, YouTube, Instagram) and encouraging people to sign up for your newsletter. You can use <a href="https://convertkit.com/?lmref=XedgVw" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ConvertKit </a>— it's free for the first 1,000 subs.</p></li><li><p><strong>Find out a problem your readers have</strong>. You can do this by asking them. Read your comments, send a poll, or just ask someone to hop on the phone with you.</p></li><li><p><strong>Build something.</strong> Maybe it's an ebook. Maybe it's a PDF template. Maybe it's a thirty-minute consultation call. You can make it literally $1, just to get that first buck in the bank.</p></li><li><p><strong>Market it</strong>. Send an email or two or eight to your subscribers. Let them know about your thing, why you think it's going to help them, and what they'll be able to do once they've bought your thing. </p></li></ol><p>How to maximize this income: This works best if you really mean it. You have to really feel like you found a problem that you can solve. You're not just trying to separate a reader from their money  —  you're helping them in a way only you can. </p><ul><li>Audience: Your newsletter</li><li>Selling: Your product</li><li>Seller: You</li></ul><h2>Want to earn your first dollar online? </h2><p>Stay away from too-good-to-be-true scams. These five methods may not make you wealthy, but they all work to get your first dollar online. That's the toughest step. </p><p>Once you've earned your first dollar, you can look for ways to scale up. I recommend:</p><ul><li>Finding out <a href="https://www.zuliewrites.com/blog/how-to-become-a-full-time-content-creator-in-2023" target="_blank" rel="noopener">how to become an online content creator</a></li><li>Trying out various <a href="https://www.zuliewrites.com/blog/5-writing-platforms-that-pay-beginners-to-write" target="_blank" rel="noopener">writing platforms that pay</a></li><li>Looking at <a href="https://www.zuliewrites.com/blog/overemployment-how-remote-workers-take-on-2-jobs-and-2-salaries" target="_blank" rel="noopener">overemployment to double your paycheck</a></li></ul><p>Hopefully, you'll be able to leave user testing and playing games for pennies behind as you move forward toward more profitable ways to earn money online. </p>

I tested 5 quick and easy ways to earn your first dollar online. This is my guide for how to do it.

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Rare Bits/BI Graphics</span></p><p class="caption">A sampling of digitized goods available for purchase on Rare Bits.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><ul><li><strong>Rare Bits is a marketplace where you can buy and sell digital goods using cryptocurrencies.</strong></li><li><strong>On Rare Bits, you can buy collectibles that you actually own through blockchain technology. </strong></li></ul><p>For the team behind virtual goods marketplace Rare Bits, dealing in digitized assets is second nature.  </p><p>Three of Rare Bits' four co-founders are former Zynga employees who worked on FarmVille, the Facebook farming game. On FarmVille, users spent hours cultivating digital crops and tilling virtual soil. At its peak, <a href="https://slate.com/technology/2018/03/farmville-helped-sow-the-seeds-of-the-cambridge-analytica-scandal.html">FarmVille had more than 80 million active monthly users</a> and its own payment system, called Farm Cash, where users could trade in real-world money for virtual farm animals and farmhouse decor.</p><p>The idea that people will spend real money on intangible items is the thesis of Rare Bits, an online emporium that deals exclusively in digitized collectibles. On Rare Bits, you can use cryptocurrencies to purchase virtual items like<a href="https://rarebits.io/item/CryptoKitties/39900"> googly-eyed cats</a>, <a href="https://rarebits.io/collection/CryptoBots">cartoon "CryptoBots</a>," and <a href="https://rarebits.io/item/CryptoPunks/9999">pixelated "CryptoPunks."</a></p><p>While digitized assets have been available for purchase in the past, Rare Bits co-founder Daniel Lee says that with the advent of blockchain technology, there's been a fundamental shift in the way people consider virtual ownership.</p><p>"All digital goods that have been sold in the history of digital goods were locked within the server of one specific individual," Lee told Business Insider. "It was a one-way street: You could buy something, but the developer could take it away, and you couldn't resell or trade it."</p><p>With the blockchain providing a digital ledger indicating virtual ownership, there's an influx of interest surrounding the buying and selling of digital goods.</p><p>It was the blockchain, said Lee, that inspired both him and his co-founders to create an entire marketplace centered on virtual ownership.</p><p>"Given all of our experiences based on building businesses that sell digital goods, we knew that there's a lot on the horizon for building a digital goods platform," Lee said.</p><p>So far, the San Francisco-based company has received $6 million in funding from investors including First Round Capital and Craft Ventures. On Tuesday, Rare Bits announced <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/08/rare-bits-launches-a-market-for-digital-collectables/">the addition of Fan Bits</a> to its platform, an interface that lets creators put digital artwork up for sale on the blockchain, all without having any prior knowledge of blockchain technology. </p><p>"The area of entertainment drives adoption, but there's going to be a progression," said Lee. "There's going to be a shift in the way people think of ownership, and we want to be the company at the center of that shift. Now, when you own something online, it actually means something."</p><p class="tagline"><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/intelligence/bitcoin-101?IR=T&amp;utm_source=businessinsider&amp;utm_medium=ctgr&amp;utm_term=ctgr_leadgen&amp;utm_content=fintech_ctgr_leadgen&amp;utm_campaign=fintech_ctgr_leadgen_bitcoin-101"></a></p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-get-billion-views-viral-hit-youtube-2018-4">How to get a billion views on YouTube</a></h3>        <div>                    </div>    </div>

Blockchain startup Rare Bits wants to be the cryptocurrency-fueled Amazon for digital goods

<p>It's a tweet that pops up every now and again, even now, nearly two years after it was first sent:</p><div><div></div></div><p class="embed-spacer">"These two books contain the sum total of all human knowledge," <a href="https://twitter.com/James_Kpatrick/status/320150923336892416">the tweet reads.</a> It was written by a man named James Kirkpatrick on April 5, 2013. Kirkpatrick, according to his Twitter bio, is a philosophy student at the University of Oxford. He has a little over 1,500 followers.</p><p class="embed-spacer">If the goal on Twitter is to get retweets and go viral, then James Kirkpatrick achieved what many people set out to do when they <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/photo-of-jared-leto-as-jesus-and-patricia-arquette-2015-2">live-tweet The Oscars</a> or make up an altercation supposedly happening on a cross-country flight.</p><p class="embed-spacer">With over 20,000 retweets, The Harvard Tweet has made its rounds. Just yesterday, I saw it retweeted into my own feed.</p><p class="embed-spacer"><em>Oh yeah,</em> I thought. <em>That joke. I've seen that joke.</em></p><p class="embed-spacer">This isn't the first, or only, joke that's been recycled across the internet.</p><p class="embed-spacer">In July, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/oh-hi-becky-farmville-tweet-goes-viral-2014-7">I wrote about a man named Chris Scott</a>, who, a little under a year ago, tweeted a joke that I refer to as "The Becky Tweet."</p><div><div></div></div><p class="embed-spacer">The peculiar thing about The Becky Tweet was that, while it was obviously a great joke, it was suddenly <em>everywhere.&#xa0;</em>People were tweeting it, word-for-word, without crediting Scott. A comedian named Jordan Carlos, who writes for MTV's "Guy Code," <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/oh-hi-becky-farmville-tweet-goes-viral-2014-7">publicly accused Scott of plagiarizing it from him</a>, then retracted his accusation after he watched every tape from a particular season of "Guy Code" and came up empty-handed with proof that Chris copped his material.</p><p class="embed-spacer">Massive internet celeb Tyler Oakley posted a screenshot of The Becky Tweet to his Tumblr with Scott's Twitter handle blacked out. A Toronto Blue Jays player tweeted The Becky Tweet without credit. If you do a Twitter search for some of the key words in the joke you'll see hundreds of tweets that either straight-up jacked Scott's joke, or swapped "Becky" for "Chelsea" or "Farmville" for "Candy Crush."</p><p class="embed-spacer">Just yesterday, BuzzFeed's <a href="https://twitter.com/MattBellassai/status/575348706398093312">Matt Bellassai tweeted the following</a>:</p><div><div></div></div><p class="embed-spacer">His joke is a sign that The Becky Tweet is now "a joke format," something that has been passed around the internet so many times it's now something everyone either a) recognizes, b) feels is fair-use, or c) believes is so popular, like the lyrics to "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star," that if shared, no one would accuse them of lifting it.</p><p class="embed-spacer">Bellassai told me he was familiar with The Becky Tweet.</p><p class="embed-spacer">"I do think there are jokes that sort of become a part of the larger Internet culture - as the Becky tweet clearly has - which manifests in the worst way as people outright stealing the joke and posting it as their own," he says, "but in the best way as people using it as an inspiration for their own jokes in the same format. There's obviously a fine line."&#xa0;</p><p class="embed-spacer"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The Becky Tweet, if hashtags can be trusted, was even the topic of this guy's ethics class.&#xa0;</span></p><div><div></div></div><p class="embed-spacer"></p><p class="embed-spacer">So, back to "The Harvard Tweet."</p><p class="embed-spacer">It's a great, clever joke, much like The Becky Tweet. It ran laps around the internet - probably several times. If you Google "These 2 books contain..." or "These two books contain..." you get a lot -<em> a lot</em> - of results. Many of the URLs are for tier sites dedicated solely to viral content and memes. You, know it's the sort of oddball stuff you see popping up on Facebook from people you barely remember from high school.</p><p class="embed-spacer"></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><p class="embed-spacer">And, of course, there's rarely any credit to Kirkpatrick. Which is fine, because Kirkpatrick, the guy who tweeted the joke into fame, isn't its creator.</p><p class="embed-spacer">It didn't take long to find out that the same joke and image had been <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1bm9ne/these_2_books_contain_the_sum_total_of_all_human/">posted to Reddit by the user Bit_Blitter on April 3, 2013</a>, two days before Kirkpatrick tweeted it. You can click the image below to enlarge it. It's important to note that even though the left-hand side of the screen says the post was submitted one year ago, the actual date of posting shows up on the right - April 3.&#xa0;</p><p class="embed-spacer"></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table click-to-enlarge"><div><div class="image"><a title_source="Reddit" title_caption="" class="zoomin" href="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/550056ee69bedd9c41597bcf-960/screen%20shot%202015-03-11%20at%2010.53.07%20am.png"><span class="sprites click-to-enlarge-icon" title="Click to enlarge"></span></a><p class="source"><span>Reddit</span></p></div><p></p></div></div><p class="embed-spacer">The joke, through a bunch of Google searches and Google image searches and Reddit searches, doesn't appear anywhere on the internet prior to April 3, 2013. So I reached out to Bit_Blitter.</p><p class="embed-spacer">Bit_Blitter, known to the world as Ryan Sabir, got back to me within hours.</p><p class="embed-spacer">In an email he wrote:</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;" dir="ltr">Yes I did create this! I also noticed that it started popping up in various places, including several reposts on Reddit. I also saw that this Twitter account had tweeted it. I didn't mind too much, I'm glad it got such good circulation! I'm not a big tweeter myself, so didn't think to tweet it as well as post it on Reddit.</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;" dir="ltr">I own the book "What they teach you at Harvard Business School" and came across the other book "What they don't teach you at Harvard Business School" online somewhere. This sounded like a set theory reference to my nerdy mind, so I came up with the title and put the 2 cover images together in Photoshop.</p><p>But the glory of having "the good joke" has always gone to Kirkpatrick, something that Sabir, who's from Australia, says doesn't really bother him, acknowledging, in some sense, the nameless-viral-content-cesspool that is Reddit.</p><p>"There's always a risk when you post anything to social media," Sabir tells me, "that it's going to be appropriated and used without attribution." He even pointed me in the direction of this meme, <a href="http://nedroid.com/">created by a guy who goes by Nedroid</a>:</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><a href="http://nedroid.com/"></a><p class="source"><span>Nedroid</span></p></div><p></p></div></div><p dir="ltr">(When I polled Twitter to see if anyone knew the definitive creator of this meme, as I didn't at the time, I was met with <a href="https://twitter.com/socarolinesays/status/575682982792536065">several people telling me "someone on imgur."</a>)</p><p dir="ltr">Kirkpatrick was unavailable for comment, but there's no evidence that he ever claimed, other than sending the original tweet, that The Harvard Tweet did in fact belong to him.</p><p dir="ltr">Sabir has a very grounded perspective on the ordeal."I'm a big believer in the power of the internet to help people get more out of life. I'm a web developer now, and have been since about 1994, pretty much when it started existing as a communication medium," he said. "These days it's so hard to find a part of it that hasn't been touched by commercial interests. Creating fake 'viral' videos has become an industry, it's difficult to watch a funny or touching video these days without expecting a product logo to pop up at the end."</p><p dir="ltr">What Sabir and Chris Scott have in common is that neither are professional comedians. They each created something - one thing - that struck a chord with the waves of the world wide web. And neither have tried to replicate that moment since.</p><p dir="ltr">"It would be a different story if I created jokes like that for a living. But in that case I'd be foolish to post it online without a very clear attribution, it's about knowing the nature of the medium you are working with," Sabir says.</p><p dir="ltr">Scott agrees.</p><p dir="ltr">"People rip [The Becky Tweet] off constantly," Scott says. "But it doesn't bother me a whole lot."</p><p dir="ltr">Sabir says he hasn't thought much about that Reddit post over the last few years, but after a quick search yesterday, found The Harvard Joke in <a href="http://www.economist.com/whichmba/omniscience-500-pages">The Economist</a> and &#xa0;<a href="http://www.esaa-events.com/proceedings/watertech/2013/pdf/P26.pdf">a presentation for groundwater research.</a></p><p dir="ltr">He was inspired to try the The Harvard Tweet himself, tweeting the now-two-year-old joke to his 55 followers.</p><p dir="ltr">I retweeted his tweet into my own feed just to see what would happen:</p><div></div><div><div></div></div><p class="embed-spacer">Ultimately, Sabir's tweet got six retweets and nine favorites after a few hours - a far, far cry from Kirkpatrick's tens of thousands collected over the last 24 months. Not to mention that almost immediately after posting, Sabir was called out:</p><div><div></div></div><p class="embed-spacer">But Sabir remains undeterred.</p><div><div></div></div><p class="embed-spacer"></p><p class="embed-spacer"></p><p class="embed-spacer"></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span>&#xa0;</span></p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/iphone-headphones-tricks-2015-2">14 things you didn't know your iPhone headphones could do</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="o2OGM3czpWcydnvhjbkDBd6feXPuExiD" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

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