Showing posts with label Daily Deals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Daily Deals. Show all posts

Google's One Today app will let you donate $1 daily for a good cause


Being generous? There is an app for that! Google is testing its new app called One Today that “brings together people and nonprofits through the simple act of giving $1.” The app displays one good cause each day and urges you to make a simple donation of $1 towards it.

Built on the back of Google’s not-for-profit arm Google.org, One Today is an Android app that will get users to donate towards organisations and charities daily. The app is available for the US only currently and also has an invite-only status to it right now.

The best part about this app is the complete transparency it keeps about where your money is going. Google has listed a few examples on the One Today page. For example, with the “Every Child Learns Empathy” project, every $50 collected means one school will receive aid to be trained in empathy best practices. Every $2 donated will translate into an hour of security for a wild rhino. From helping poor farmers in Africa to helping nature and wildlife, One Today will display a new project everyday that needs funds.

Donate $1 a day to a cause of your choice

It’s a great crowdsourcing idea with a friends angle too. The app allows for you to set a cap in relation to how much money you will match if your friends donate to a particular project. You can then pay off your donation balance once your friends have used up the cap. Individually, you can only donate $1 per project per day. However, if you want to donate more, you can challenge your friends to match your donations, says the FAQs page of One Today.

Currently, the page for the project will only let you request for an invite. The app looks like its undergoing a controlled hush-hush test right now, but it could be possible that it is open to international audience as well. If you’re an organisation, you can already start to list yourself to be featured as the Project of the Day. The app is a great move on Google.org’s part and with its backing, One Today could turn into a revolutionary way of donating to charities.

Google.org was recently in the news for lending support to help victims of the Boston Marathon bombings reach their loved ones. The search giant activated its Person Finder app to help locate missing people.

The helpful tool was first activated during the Haiti earthquake in 2010.

When you logged into the page, you were shown two options. The first said “I’m looking for someone” and helped you find out if there was any information about a loved one you were searching for. If there was any positive information about the person you were searching for, a message that said “Status: Someone has received information that this person is alive" was shown on screen. You could then click to see where the information came from.

The second button read, “I have information about someone”. This tool was for people who have the whereabouts of people affected by the blast. Entering information using this button will helped people who’re searching for their loved ones co-ordinate information.

The app had managed to help locate thousands of people before it was deactivated a couple of days ago. Charities and not-for-profit organisations are in safe hands with One Today, it would seem.

Report by : Nishtha Kanal

eBay starts daily deals for services, taking on Groupon


EBay Inc has quietly launched an online marketplace for deals on local services, taking on Groupon Inc and expanding into a potentially big category.

Called eBay Lifestyle Deals, the offers are being run in a limited number of urban areas, including the San Francisco Bay area, Los Angeles and Washington D.C.

Recent deals included $12 for a one-hour dog-walking service worth $25; $50 for a month of Yoga classes worth $110; and $180 for six private gym sessions worth $360.

eBay Lifestyle Deals launched

The move is potentially a big step for eBay, which has traditionally focused on products rather than services.

"We have a big marketplace and a lot of people who come to eBay don't just come for one thing - they stay and buy across categories," said Devin Wenig, president of eBay Marketplaces.

"It makes perfect sense to experiment with new categories, and services is one of these things. We're seeing whether deals and services are attractive to our customers."

EBay has teamed up with start-up Signpost, which arranges the deals with local merchants and posts them on a new section of eBay's online marketplace, www.ebay.com/exp/lifestyle-deals.

Signpost, backed by Google Ventures, already provides deals for Google Offers, a rival to Groupon.

EBay plans to add more daily deal providers if the effort goes well.

"Signpost is a merchant, just like merchants selling physical goods on eBay," Wenig said. "A merchant may sell local or even global services on eBay in the future."

BIA/Kelsey, which tracks the local media industry, expects U.S. consumer spending for online deals to reach $5.5 billion by 2016, up from $1.8 billion last year. That includes daily deals, and other discounted online sales channels, such as product deals and flash sales.

Groupon Chief Executive Andrew Mason has estimated the total local-commerce market is worth $3 trillion.

EBay has run daily deals on physical products for about two years, but this is its first foray into discounted services in the United States.

Groupon started the daily deal craze in late 2008 and quickly grew into a company with thousands of employees and well over $1 billion in annual revenue.

That growth attracted a lot of deep-pocketed rivals, such as Google Inc, Amazon.com Inc and Facebook Inc. However, growth has slowed recently as consumers tired of endless deals from multiple providers. Facebook shelved its first effort in the market last year.

Groupon shares have lost about three-quarters of their value since the company went public last year.

However, Google and Amazon have stuck with their daily deal businesses.

EBay shares rose 0.5 percent to $46.45 on Nasdaq at midday.


Report by: Reuters