Hold on tight. ‘Pivot’ is the new buzz word around here these days, so we decided.. since everybody’s doing it, we should too.
In all seriousness, we have decided to de-emphasize campaigning in our platform and re-emphasize actions. What we’ve found out through old-fashioned trial and error is that building our whole business model around campaigning is harder than building it around actions because the latter gives us a clear enterprise customer who greatly values our solution and… well, it’s a bigger market. In the end of the day, we’re still all about letting the amateur campaigner/organizer change the world in her PJs, but it’s now more indirect.
So what am I talking about? Well if you looked at the new Blitz Bazaar website, you’d have noticed everything’s different. It used to say, “Blitz Bazaar, the best way to organize large numbers of people for a common goal.” Now it says, “reinventing community service to be more engaging, social and rewarding.”
Our site has always been about three things: people, actions and blitzes (a.k.a. campaigns). This isn’t changing. A campaign is inert unless it has large numbers of people taking action. What we’ve doing now is pulling the actions out of the blitzes and pooling them together into one place for you to digest right when you log-in. It’s simpler. The user can still check out the blitzes but everything is engineered now to encourage action-taking and to simplify user experience. It’s also all geared towards existing communities that you’re probably a part of: a corporation, a church, a school, a university, a town, etc.
The main reason we’re convinced Blitz Bazaar is a game-changer as compared to the other volunteer and social actions sites on the web that haven’t taken off is because we do NOT presume that people wake up in the morning wanting to look for social actions to do. I know I don’t. Starting without that assumption, we’ve had to figure out what the biggest motivators for taking action are. Well here’s the answer: people are motivated to do good in order to: (1) strengthen relationships, (2) build up their own reputation, (3) get something in return, (4) – when possible – to have fun! … oh yeah and that altruistic one… (5) to make the world a better place. We all care about good ol’ #5 but what’s the trigger to get us away from Facebook, Xbox, TV screens, oh… and now the iPad? It’s (1)-(4).
Easier said than done? Yeah, true. We’re an open book on what we’re doing because it’s hard and we figure that if we don’t have the answer, someone will and this is too important to hard close to our chests while the world’s biggest problem continue while we play Wii.
So our approach is to package up into one community service platform the following: social networking software for private communities (i.e. universities, schools, religious institutions, corporations, etc) & social gaming: points, levels and redeemable rewards. What does this mean? After you log-into our site (your school or corporate community service portal), you can see in real-time what social actions your friends and community members are doing. You can then take action yourself. As you take action, you get points. As you get more points, you level up. You also can redeem them for donated items in our gift store. Why go to an arcade when you can have the same experience while making the world a better place and getting to know your neighbors better?
Hold on tight while we upgrade our platform over the next couple weeks to reflect these changes. It’s going to be a gem.
Also, we’re starting to talk with potential customers in the Bay Area so if you know any progressive companies with strong community service programs (CSR) or universities, schools or religious institutions that want to strengthen their own communities around social action, we really appreciate an intro.
See you out there changing the world.
