Thursday, December 12, 2013

Expenseless charity, Ads for better world

Hello everyone, my name’s Gregory and I am from Russia. Once I’ve been sitting in a vodka bar and playing with my bear… Oh that Russian stuff again, sorry.
Well yes, I am from Russia and I have quit my job a couple months ago. I actually got tired and bored of selling CDs in the world of wild Russian Internet where nobody wants to pay for media content and the most powerful social network — Vkontakte — is the first one to support media pirates. Thanks for reading that, just couldn’t keep it in.
Sitting in a bar I was thinking about what’s wrong with Russia (just like every unemployed in former USSR does). Then my genius friend named Ruben Babaev came up. That was the day I got involved in the most exciting and interesting work in my life. 
What Ruben told me first was another terrifying truth about my country: Russians hate helping each other. Today Russia rates 138 of 153 on the World Giving Index, which is between Montenegro and Bulgaria. What’s in it for me, I asked. And then Ruben helped me like so few people in Russia do. =) Ruben is genius. He created the SocialCoins project I currently participate in.
The easiest way to explain what is Social Coins is to show you how it works. Meet Artem (English subtitles available): 
Artem wants to buy a puppy for his sister, he filmed this video and posted it at Social Coins. Users like this kinda stories and readily help Artem scratch up the pledged amount of money (set at solid $250).
And here’s the point — it costs $0 for users to help Artem. Absolutely free. It is nothing like GoFundMe and Kickstarter. Because Russians mostly don’t help each other that way. People don’t have to give their money away at Social Coins to help Artem. They only have to choose a small Ad from the list and post it on their Twitter account. Oh they don’t even have to post it or something — they only drag a coin from the list to Artem’s video, Ads get posted on Twitter, Artem gets small amount of money. Ain’t it cool?

This is probably the most impressive idea I’ve ever heard. Everyday I watch Ads on my FB wall. Do they give me any value? Do I receive something from advertisers? Nope, in 99% it’s just a useless and irritating spam from me and millions of other Internet users.
Next point: “charity” (in wide understanding of this word) — for many times I was asked to help someone, but making donations is inconvenient and unsafe (login to your bank account, searching for credit card numbers etc.), and after all many people don’t want to pay with their own money — because they are stingy. OK — this is problem we know how to solve. I let advertisers to show their ads on my wall, but in return part of payments goes to people in need whatever they need =)
Whatever people need or dream of they can get what they want at Social Coins (well if it’s something one can do for money).Traditional charity, opensource software, donations to musicians and bloggers — whatever works. We also would like websites to add our special Donate for free buttons for even easier way to collect donations via Social Coins.

Check us out! You know, by working together, we can build pyramids and fly to the moon. Every user’s contribution helps us to fund any good stuff on Social Coins. The social component of our site is also a very important thing about it: we are friends, we are partners, but first of all – we are not alone in this aspiration to make the world a bit kinder.

Love, Gregory from the bar.

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Social Coins rated 'B' on Russian Startup Rating

Social Coins just rated 'B' on Russian Startup Rating which is for 'medium success chances'.
This is still OK to us because Social Coins team is actually a very young developement unit with minimum experience in creating something of that impact and of that scale. Medium success chances only means to us we have to work harder. 
Stay tuned!

Thursday, December 05, 2013

Earlydays practice: challenge accepted

Well, Social Coins founder and CEO Ruben Babaev has just talked to Earlydays author Yury Lifshits. Ten minutes conversation resulted in fabulous goal Lifshits gave to Social Coins: collect solid 30.000 rubles (ca. $1.000) for projects or for any single project in only two weeks.
OK, challenge accepted, Mr. Lifshits!

Social Coins team participates in Earlydays course this December

Tonight the whole Social Coins team has been approved to participate in Earlydays online course.
Earlydays is a wellknown global course for first-time entrepreneurs and provides high-level expert support to startups on any stages.
What's in it for us? We hope to get new experiense and ideas from best Russian professionals, who could perhaps help us avoid major mistakes on early stage and actually die in some dumb way. =) Besides we are in desperate need of critical analysis of Social Coins by community of experts.
Social Coins has been chosen for free participation in Earlydays course and we are very proud of that. We are gonna prove our worth!

Wednesday, December 04, 2013

Iconbird.com added Donate for free button

Today is a great day for Social Coins!
Iconbird.com appeared to be the first site ever to add our special Donate for free button, which allows to make donations to the site without giving money away.
Iconbird.com is a new free russian icon storage developed by russian startup team from Moscow. From now on iconbird users can easily donate to this promising project via Social Coins.

This is how the button itself looks. Do you like it?