This evening, Aldo Coffee (which is located in Mt. Lebanaon) wrote a blog post  linking to this post on the blog Coffee Strategies – which is a blog that covers all sorts of interesting things about the coffee business.

Coffee Strategies writes about Jonthan’s Card (http://jonathanstark.com/card/) – an image of Starbuck’s gift card that Jonathan Stark uploaded to the internet.  The card is there for people to download to their phones to use to buy a cofee or to add money to so that other people can use.  You can follow the balance of the card via @jonathanscard on Twitter. [The only video I can find about this is from Jamie aka @JTYourFace who is  an enthusiastic social media lover/YouTuber.  You can check out her run down on the Jonathan Card here).]

The Coffee Strategies post suggests that Jonathan’s Card is not just a social experiment but more of a covert Starbucks promotion.  You can read all of the details and see the screenshots on the Coffee Strategies post here.   It looks like Stark launched this project back on July 14, 2011.  But the project has recently been getting a ton of buzz around the internet – CNN, Make, Laughing Squid, Tech Crunch.

There are some interesting comments on the blog posts about this project.  Will people give and take or will people just take and the card balance will be zero.  So far that hasn’t been the case.

Buy-A-Burgher-A-Beer App?

Image by bunchofpants via Flickr

Reading some of the posts on the Aldo Coffee blog  – there was one post last week that is no long up about the price of coffee and recently the knitting shop, Naturally Stitches, wrote a post kindly explaining some of their price increases — led me to think about what this type of project might look like if it was just a Pittsburgh project.  Could we create something like this that could only be used at local coffee shops?  Could it be set up as a fundraiser – maybe match the dollars added to the card with a donation to a local non-profit?

The app Gifi lets you leave a gift for a friend the next time they check-in to a place on Foursquare (I am not sure if Gifi still works their blog hasn’t been updated since 2010).  I know there are apps that let you send gifts to friends – like Giiv.  Starbucks and Pepsi have apps where you can send a drink to a friend.  The beer tracking app Beerby was developed here in Pittsburgh by Levlr.

What should a Pittsburgh-buy-a-cup-of-coffee-for-a-stranger app look like?  Since this is Pittsburgh, maybe it should be a buy-a-beer-for-a-stranger app.  Would people use it? Any app developers out there who would want to make a Pittsburgh app?

More posts about Jonathan’s Card:

• Free coffee: A social sharing experiment full of beans? (theglobeandmail.com)
• If you’re strapped for cash at a Starbucks, use Jonathan’s card (geek.com)
• Mobile wallet experiment means free coffee from Jonathan’s Starbucks card (digitaltrends.com)
• Twitter+Starbucks App Account = Social Coffee Experiment : Jonathan’s Card (socialtimes.com)
• Get a free Starbucks drink on Jonathan, share in a social payment experiment (zdnet.com)