A friend of mine one night in a sake stupor at our favorite sushi restaurant in Honolulu (Yanagi) jumped up and screamed… “we’re going to Maui” in an effort to get us to bail on work and go with him the next morning. Needless to say, I didn’t make the journy, so it is now with great pleasure that I can announce that we are going to “DEMO!” with the expectation that I’ll be there on Jan 28th. I promised more blogging, so here we go. We sold the versus apps, have been secretly working on a new product for the past year as the ChipIn.com site chugs along. So to entice you to keep reading I’ll just dribble the news out a bit at a time.
We’ve reached a remarkable milestone! Join us at DEMO 08 and see how we will rearchitect the future of technology.
DEMO 08 • The Launchpad for Emerging Technologies
January 28-30, 2008
Desert Springs, A JW Marriott Resort & Spa
Palm Desert, CA
www.demo.com/D8PROMOKIT
We’re excited to announce that we have been selected to reveal our groundbreaking technology at DEMO 08, the premier, unparalleled event that showcases the latest, best technologies – those that promise to literally reshape our future and enrich our lives.
Happy New Year! Lots of exciting announcements from us so keep your RSS newsreader warmed up and ready to ingest everything we are sending your way. To start things off, I am very happy to announce that ChipIn has finalized the sale of our Versus franchise today. What started off as an idea over a couple of beers as a fun way to market ChipIn on Facebook has turned into a pretty cool game franchise with many flavors. From Pirates, Ninjas, Snowboarders, Skiers, Santa, Grinch, Cops, to Robbers. Why did we sell an application with over 5M users? 5M pageviews per day?
FOCUS FOCUS FOCUS.
We are launching a killer new product at DEMO later this month and as much fun as we were having on the Versus apps, we need to put 100% of our resources into the future of our company.. as a dominant widget authoring technology (sheesh.. more on that soon). There was a pretty cool article in Inc. magazine this month outlining why ChipIn decided to sell our Versus apps on Facebook. As much as we are sad to see our apps go, we are really happy to be working with Michael Lazerow, CEO and his team at Buddy Media to continue to grow our Versus franchise while integrating Acebucks into the applications to create a more robust and fun user experience for everyone.
; A big cheers to Austin and Dustin who have been building out the applications and a toast to Rob and Andy for writing much of the initial code base.So if you have not checked out the Facebook versus apps, go give them a spin. And if you want to read more about the transaction, check out the Buddy Media blog post. What’s going on with DEMO? More info will be coming soon. I’m back and blogging now.
Pretty neat Wall Street Journal article about online fundraising and Chipin today. You need a WSJ account to read the article, so here’s the text…
Virtuous Reality
How Online Networks Can Boost Good Causes
March 30, 2007
JAKARTA, Indonesia — When Beth Kanter added a few lines of computer code to a Web site in December she proved a simple truth: All the fancy social-networking, Web 2.0 stuff we keep hearing about can have a useful purpose.
The computer code was what is called a Web widget. Think of it as a mini Web page within a larger Web page, a panel where the data come from a different source from the rest of the stuff on that page. Widgets are increasingly popular as a way of delivering little slices of information or content to Web logs (blogs) or other Web pages. Usually, it’s geeky stuff like a clock or a piece of music or video. But in Ms. Kanter’s case it’s about raising money for charity.
Ms. Kanter, a 50-year-old Massachusetts-based consultant to nonprofit organizations, wasn’t new to computers. So when in November Honolulu-based ChipIn launched its fund-raising widget, which allows users to contribute money and also displays how much money has been raised and how much still needs to be raised, she took the plunge; she placed the code on her Web page (sharingfoundation.chipin.com/sharing-foundation) and set a goal — raising a modest $750 to fund Cambodian orphan Leng Sopharath to go to college — and a deadline of a month. She then raided address books, instant-messaging buddy lists and networking sites for people who might be interested. ChipIn handled the donations. She raised $882 in 26 days. (You can find details of her campaign at widgetfundraising.wikispaces.com.)
Raising money online isn’t new. But what’s interesting about Ms. Kanter’s case is that the panel she used taps into something else: the growing trend of social networking online. Web sites, Web services and blogs all thrive on the ability to reach others and build informal, ad hoc networks of people with similar interests and goals. What Ms. Kanter proved is that it’s possible to use these networks to raise money, quickly, without a lot of back-office stuff. As Michael Stein, California-based nonprofit strategist and author of a book on online fund raising, puts it: “Everyone talks about Web 2.0, viral marketing…Beth sat down one afternoon and wanted to make it work for her.”
Ms. Kanter, says ChipIn founder and Chief Executive Carnet Williams, is not alone. Since November, ChipIn widgets have been used for 3,000 events, raising more than $500,000 for them.
Expect to see this kind of thing grow. Peer-to-peer fund raising, or personal fund raising, or distributed fund raising may appear more authentic and appealing to people fatigued by overexposure to TV, newspaper and magazine appeals. “People want to know where their $10 is going and how it is helping,” Mr. Williams says.
The system isn’t perfect. One area ChipIn and other similar services have yet to master is money: While it’s easy to donate via their widgets if you’re a user of online payment service PayPal, this doesn’t work in all currencies and in all countries.
And it remains to be seen whether this is just a fad. After all, donor fatigue is just as likely to kick in online as offline. If every Web site and blog we visit is festooned with tip jars, donate badges and fund-raising bars, we may just switch off. But on the other hand we read the people we trust and we trust the people we know, so it’s more likely that we’ll give to a charity they believe in. That we’re able to monitor what’s happened to our cash just may end up making us more discerning, generous givers.
Widgets may not herald the end of the big, mainstream charities, says Ms. Kanter, but they are here to stay. “Organizations that think it is a fad,” she says, “will be left out.”
The engineering team hit the white label demo deadline and crunched right through it. Now we are getting ready to implement the system for our first set of clients. I can’t wait to get the system up live and running. We are also working hard to get the new chipin.com site ready for beta and launch before the NTEN conference in April. We have not released many new features on chipin.com since the beginning of the year because we are rewriting the entire site with many more social/community features.
We had a nice shout today on the techsoup newsletter and website.
We are happy to announce a new partnership today with Papilia. Full press release here.
Papilia And ChipIn Partner to Provide Best-Of-Breed Solution for Donor-Centered Fundraising and Communications
Web 2.0 social fundraising widgets to be integrated into Papilia’s donor engagement services.
San Francisco, CA; Honolulu, HI (PRWEB) February 26, 2007 — Papilia, a pioneer in donor-centered fundraising solutions for nonprofit organizations, and ChipIn, the leading provider of Web 2.0-based social fundraising widgets for nonprofits, today announced a technology partnership to integrate their offerings within Papilia’s donor engagement web-based application. The enhanced solution will provide Papilia clients with an integrated fundraising suite consisting of ChipIn’s Widget technology and services, as well as the personalization and communication power of Papilia.
“In the past, nonprofits’ fundraising staff has carried the burden of raising funds for their causes alone. Now, with Papilia and ChipIn, donors can easily raise funds on an organization’s behalf by engaging their social network,” said Stephane Giraudie, co-founder and chief product officer at Papilia. “We are very excited about guiding the future of Blograising and anticipate a huge demand in the combined functionality.”
Under the terms of the agreement, Papilia and ChipIn will co-develop a private-labeled version of ChipIn’s Widget Management System (WMS), and integrate it into Papilia’s existing service offerings. This will enable nonprofits to conduct viral, donor-to-donor fundraising campaigns seamlessly within Papilia’s existing donor-centered fundraising solution.
“Widgets have been widely adopted by social media users for blogging, social networking and personal websites, and are the core components of some of today’s most popular online services,” said Carnet Williams, chief executive officer at ChipIn. “Considering the ease of implementation and the results ChipIn’s widgets have provided fundraisers to-date, the combination of ChipIn and Papilia is a great solution for nonprofits looking to engage, monetize, and retain donors in a personalized, result-driven manner.”
Development efforts are to begin immediately, and integration completed in the second quarter of 2007. For more information, please contact Papilia by visiting www.papilia.com.
About ChipIn
ChipIn, based in Honolulu and San Francisco, enables organizations and individuals to conduct supporter-driven marketing campaigns within social media. ChipIn’s widget management service leverages the passion and creativity of social media users while allowing organizations to retain full control over content and distribution. For more information, please visit www.chipin.com or email e-mail protected from spam bots.
About Papilia
Papilia, a privately-held San Francisco company, is a pioneer in donor-centered fundraising solutions for nonprofit organizations. Papilia helps nonprofits secure more donors with less effort by enabling them to deliver uniquely personal online experiences to each donor. Inspired by the thoughtful attention routinely offered to major donors, Papilia’s new generation personalization technology lets organizations treat every donor like a major donor. Leading nonprofits, such as Catholic Charities, California Pacific Medical Center Foundation, and Big Brothers Big Sisters, are using Papilia to attract new donors and better engage their existing ones. For more information, please visit the Papilia corporate website at www.papilia.com or call (415) 692-0071.
Alex our good buddy just IM’d to say that Chipin made it on the New York Times Technology column this morning. While we are not featured in the story, our widget is prominently displayed on the header to the story. Wait until we launch our widget management system… then they will have something to really write about!
Happy New Year! We are back in the office well rested and ready to take on ‘07. A couple of bits of news… Adam our intrepid product manager decided to focus on his own company Mindsay and get back to his friends and family on the East Coast. We wish him the best of luck and for sure will continue to keep in touch. We also welcome to our Honolulu offices Michelle. She has been working with us since the beginning as our support director… we say she has the voice of a goddess. Actually a great story.. I met Michelle over the phone even before we started ChipIn and knew I had to find a place for her. Now the interesting part is that I never met her in person. I figured with her personality on the phone and enthusiasm for what we are doing it was a perfect match. She has stayed on with us part time until we could bring her on board. Well, the opportunity came up and she’s now going to keep us all in line. So welcome Michelle!
It has been an amazing start to the New Year. Todd has been in Honolulu for the past two weeks working with me on new business strategies. We have been very fortunate to get so many inquiries about our service.. we are ramping up to work with some big name partners soon. More when I can announce something. We are also planning to attend and speak at several NPO events this quarter. Things are really ramping up quickly. I love it.
We also made it on the Typepad widgets gallery today. Our widget has been working on Typepad for about a month, but I guess they just finally posted that.. I think it is perfect, to be announced as one of the new widgets for 2007… the year of the widget.
Lots of new happenings here….. so thanks for your support in ‘06 and we hope to give you an even better chipin experience in ‘07.
It is 4 a.m. on day two of our launch week. We already have some pretty cool success stories, particularly one about a young woman who fell ill while visiting family in California. Her classmates got together an in a day raised their goal to bring her home.
ChipIn is a really killer tool not just for personal collection of money, but also for institutions to “blograise” We are currently tracking some conversations in the NPO fundraising community and also working with several donorware companies to see how they can easily integrate our fundraising widget. E.politics ran a short story on us
And to top if off, Peter has written an excellent article that is a primer on how to use our system.
ChipIn can also be used in conjunction with other formats of fundraising. For example, Beth has embedded video on her Sharing Foundation ChipIn page along with pictures to tell her story.
We soft launched ChipIn on May 17th and since then have been slowly picking up some coverage online. We are ramping up for a full blown launch in a couple of weeks, but it has been exciting to see ChipIn in the news. It has been amazing to see people talk about ChipIn and even more fun to see the numerous events being created. The team has been working hard to release a bunch of new features. These features have all been at the request of our early users. Thanks for all the great feedback, and please keep it coming ! A couple highlights:
Open Chipin Events - unique URLs that can be pasted in emails on a Web sites and in blogs. Organizers have the ability to moderate users who request to be added to a ChipIn event. We will add enhancements very soon.
RSS Feeds
Custom messages to participants
Import addresses from Outlook, gmail, hotmail, yahoo, and others
Resend invitations to participants
Add or Delete participants
Great new features and a whole bunch more. Wait until next week when we launch our . . .
