One of the most fascinating social experiments based on coffee house business has more or less collapsed in a whirl of internet ‘flaming’ and abuse.

The Jonathan’s Card project was begun by an American, Jonathan Stark, as an experiment in the use of payment methods. Effectively, he took the image of his Starbucks ‘card’ from his i-phone, posted it online, put a few dollars on his account, and invited anyone else to use it to buy themselves coffee, in the hope that they too would deposit some money on the card so that the next person to come along could also have a coffee.

The concept is a variation of the ‘random acts of kindness’, an American occasional habit that crops up quite regularly – there have been several cases at independent drive-thru coffee houses of someone buying a coffee for themselves and paying also for one for the next person in the queue.  What has generally happened is that the next person continues the process, and there have been cases of the chain going on for some weeks, and for several thousand customers.   (There has also been some disappointment when, after a long chain of payments, some grumpy customer has taken the free coffee and simply driven off!)

Starbucks has itself in the past been involved in ‘pay-it-forward cheer chains’ which it has created for its own purposes, but denies being involved in the Jonathan’s Card project.

In this case, Jonathan Stark loaded his account with $100, and made the image of his card available to anyone who wanted to load it on to their own i-phone and present it at a Starbucks counter.  The experiment took off like a rocket, and at one stage there were several thousand dollars in credit on the card.

Then a computer enthusiast put a spanner in the works.  He created a method by which he would receive an alert when the card balance reached a certain amount, and a method of transferring money away from the card.

He wrote, online: “For the last week I (and others) have been using this script to transfer donated money off Jonathan’s card and onto our own Starbucks gift cards. It’s easy: just head to your local Starbucks, pop open your computer, run this script, and when the music plays, cash in. Through this strategy I’ve personally netted $625 by spending less than five hours at Starbucks. That’s enough for an iPad.”

The fury that this unleashed online is difficult to describe.  Hundreds of supporters of the Jonathan’s Card project vented their rage at the hacker, and Starbucks itself decided to step in and close down that card account.  It is reported that Starbucks’ vice president of digital ventures called Jonathan Stark to tell him that his card would be deactivated, even though the brand was informally impressed with what he had done.

The hacker has claimed that he has not really bought himself an iPad, but has begun selling images of the card on Ebay and donating the proceeds to Save The Children.  However, it is also reported that Ebay has blocked that particular sale.

Jonathan Stark has spoken of the pleasure he has felt at the hundreds of people who used his card in the way he intended, and has suggested that he may start the experiment up again in a different form.

“We believe this is the start to a bigger more glowing picture. In the last five days or so, we’ve received hundreds of stories of people doing small things to brighten a stranger’s day:  paying for the next car at the drive-through, sharing a pick-me-up with someone who has had a rough time, charging up a phone card and sharing it with strangers at the airport. The list goes on, and on, and on…”