beautiful bytes: pay it forward
Facebook pays it forward
In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, Facebook launched a beta test on Facebook Gifts allowing users to make donations to one of eleven American charities for a friend or family member. The user can choose the charity, or gift the donation to their friend who can then select the charity.
When this rolls out beyond the initial test, I’m excited to see whether this will become a viable fundraising channel for charities everywhere.
Donate to Hurricane Sandy on iTunes
I thought this was pretty awesome in its simplicity: you can make purchases in iTunes simply using your Apple ID, so you can also go ahead and donate on the same platform.
It is a given that conversions increase when PayPal is offered as a payment method: you don’t need a credit card handy, so you can make that spur of the moment purchase you weren’t intending to make when you stumbled upon that page or status update. So any platform that allows you to simply sign in then makes it easy to add a donation in a convenient place in your user journey (kudos to ebay) is an absolute gift to charities (and CSR teams), especially in times of crisis. Amazon, I’m looking at you.
Facebook testing new timeline
Here’s a Facebook update that might actually be welcomed: Facebook is testing a wider single column layout to timeline updates, with activity, apps update and friends mosaic in a narrower right hand column.
Judging from these screenshots, it certainly looks a lot more intuitive to read status updates vertically, as opposed to horizontally and vertically, and brings the user experience more consistently in line with their mobile app.
Until next week
Rochelle
