Three days ago I sent 250 SBD to @tipU because it seemed like a really fun, easy way to surprise someone with an extra bit of support, even with low voting power. I like keeping my voting power around 80%, but that hasn't happened in a while as it's more often falling below 60%.

If you haven't yet heard of @tipU, consider this your introduction!

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@tipU is a fun and somewhat addictive way you can send SBD to people simply by writing tip! X where X is the amount of SBD you want to send. First you have to deposit some SBD.

That's then kept in an account for you, which you can withdraw at any time. There are various supported commands such as checking your balance:

Maybe I've been a little too active with it, but I'm having so much fun! I've been tipping 5 SBD on average, with a few larger ones as well.

I gave 20 SBD to help a little with some funeral expenses, tipped some art I liked, a post about women in crypto, a 20 SBD tip to a post I knew would get flagged for speaking the truth, some more art I liked, and 50 SBD to a heart-breaking story of a single mother with sick kids who will soon be homeless (and no, before you ask, it's not a scam; this person was vouched for by members of the community).

One of the most fun was a tip for some photography I enjoyed which resulted in this reply:

One tip turns into the nicest thing that's happened to them on Steemit in 2 months!

Clearly we need more of this!

So if you want to get started, check out their latest post:

@tipU Guide #3 - checking your Balance, setting Default Tip and other @tipU Commands

To be clear, I don't know @cardboard personally so if they decide to be a bad actor and steal everyone's money, don't blame me. From what I've seen so far, this seems to be a legit service which is really helpful to the community. What I can say for sure is I've had a lot of fun with it so far.

Now, some advice:

@tipU allows you to set a link so that when it replies to the person you're tipping to let them know you sent them a tip, it will include a link to a post you choose. That's pretty neat, but my fear is if a lot of people start using this service, it will start to look like spam all over the place. "Hey, look, I just gave you some meaningless tip of $0.02, but now you have a link to my post. Come visit, PLZ?" No one wants to see the comments on their posts filled up with stuff like that.

My suggestion:

Use the hide feature. Just send your tip with tip! X hide. That will still send the tip just fine, and if they read your reply, they'll see the tip command so you'll get the social credit you unconsciously desire, but more importantly, it won't fill up the comments section with @tipU's reply.

At the same time, spreading awareness about this cool little tool is important for those who want to spread some SBD love around and enjoy the process. If they don't know about it, they can't use it. The default reply by @tipU is a nice little advertisement for the service, and I've already been told by one person they found it due to a tip I left:

Thanks @lukestokes for the 'tip off' on that interesting Africa post. Not sure if I doing this correctly so this is just a test.

So using hide (especially this early in the life of this service) is just a soft suggestion if this thing starts to take off. Let's keep the spam down while having fun.

I hope you enjoyed this post. If you do start using @tipU because you found out about it here, please let me know! I'd love to hear your experiences with it.

Again, shout out to @cardboard for making something fun and to @felixxx for providing the inspiration as mentioned in the @tipU introduction post.

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Luke Stokes is a father, husband, business owner, programmer, and voluntaryist who wants to help create a world we all want to live in. Visit UnderstandingBlockchainFreedom.com

_{I'm a Witness! Please vote for @lukestokes.mhth}