Vincent Cassar

Webaholic & Social Entrepreneur

Cool idea: Tweet and GIVE

Givly

Social networking website users can now make money for charities by recommending products through URL-shortening service good.ly on Twitter, Facebook or via email.

Users put a link to a product or service within a Twitter message, known as a tweet, or a Facebook update through a shortened good.ly URL. Web retailers pay a referral fee for each person that purchases a product they have found after clicking on a good.ly link.

Good.ly will give charities 55% of the fee.

“We have the underlying technology anyway and it occurred to us that there is huge potential to monetise it for charities,” said Alicia Navarro, founder of good.ly. “We’re trying to piggy back on an exciting social media trend, earn a little money, and make it easier for people to support charities.”

At present three charities, The Dogs Trust, homelessness charity Crisis and US charity ChildVoice International, which works with children in Africa, are listed as potential beneficiaries of good.ly.

Good.ly aims to include more charities, and recommends that the service might be particularly useful to charities that have a large twitter following. Charities interested in using the service should contact good.ly via their website.


** This article was published form Philanthropyuk.org
Tweeters now give good.ly to charity
By Ben Eyre

Carrot Mobing or how organized consumer buying can change business?

Carrotmob

Flash mobbing was cool a few years ago. CarrotMobing is the new thing for 2009. Once again developed by people falling under what's referred to as the Generation G. (Twenty something aware of the socioeconomic realities the world is facing. Aspiring at living in a capitalistic way but in a more sustainable manner)

The movement was born on March 29, 2008, when hundreds of green-minded patrons poured into a San Francisco convenience store after Schulkin solicited bids from 23 stores in the area to find the business that would promise to spend the highest percentage of Carrotmob profits on more energy-efficient lighting. The crowd spent more than $9,200 at the K&D Market, which then fulfilled its pledge to plow 22% of the day's revenue into greener lighting — with the haul from the Carrotmob providing enough cash to make all the improvements recommended by an energy auditor (and Carrotmob supporter).

Check it out:  http://carrotmob.org/

10 Awesomely Strange Google Trends (from my friend Paul)

Thank you Paul for this:


In case you live in a cave, Google Trends is a tool that charts how often something is being searched for over a timeline, revealing any interesting spikes in its popularity. For instance, nobody searched for 'Iphone' before 2006, then suddenly searching goes through the roof when the Spawn of Satan product was announced and then released.

On the other hand, people have been diligently searching for 'funny babies' ever since the dawn of time... except for a period in 2004 when apparently nobody thought babies were funny.

Here are 10 Google Trend phenomena that I found awesomenly inexplicable.

1. Anal Fisting

My friend Brian showed me this, inspiring this post. What was it about January 2006 that had everybody suddenly thinking "I wanna go look up 'Anal Fisting' on the internet?" Was there a popular Japanese "art" picture on the topic? Was there a South Park Episode about it? Did President Bush accidentally slip the phrase into one of his speeches? Speculation abounds, though I'm sure January 2006 was a good month for whoever had sagaciously (and distrurbingly) registered www.analfisting.com.


2. AIDS

Every year a spike? But less so every year? A thread on reddit suggests that this is right around the time of Aids Awareness Month, in which case their advertising really works! It also suggests that people are getting sick of Aids Awareness month.


3. Bush Baby

I don't even know what this is. I must have been out of town during that one week right after New Year's in 2007.


4. Iphone Sucks

Curiously, closely following the spike in searches for "IPhone".


5. April Fools Jokes

This one makes sense. It also explains why we're so readily tricked, year after year.


6. Dildo, Vibrator

Coincidence...?


7. Dildo, Vibrator, Brokeback Mountain

...I think NOT!


8. Sparkling Wiggles

Off the hilarious Sparkling Wiggles video.


9. Cincinatti Bowtie

You don't want to know what this is. And if you do... well... Google it


10. Monster Pig