I don't think anyone ever paid their rent from their TipJar.
If you have a specific project, you can crowdfund to get the necessary economy-of-scale to make it work. But just TipJar that sits there is afaik pretty much insignificant.
So while it sounds nice, the economics ostensibly don't work:
Perhaps you will argue that tips will be greater if people have an easier and more instant way to tip.
Let's say I have 10,000 readers per month at my blog, and 5% of them tip me on average 50 cents. That is $250 per month. That won't even pay rent. And 5% is I think fairly high conversion rate.
Also I think people get tired of tipping. It sounds nice and everyone is motivated at the start, but over time they will grow weary of the cognitive load of, "who do I tip this month?". They have to organize all their web activity and analyze it. The cognitive load is the real killer.
That was a thought provoking article, thanks! I agree with much of that analysis for small amounts as he suggested, but for larger amounts I'm not sure. I think we can break tipping into two groups - passive tipping, where you tip someone for content they already produced like a blog, and interactive tipping, where you tip someone for a response they give you. I think the 2nd type has much more potential to generate meaningful income
@TPTB, you for example, could open a Q&A thread for tech & other advice. An answer that takes you a few minutes to write *might* be worth thousands to the questioner. That type of thing would probably fall under 'tipping' but it's different to a fractional penny, and if it was easier to do it might take off.