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December 30, 2005

The Favor Exchange

Michael Arrington

29 comments »

It’s the last business day of the year, which obviously leads me to think about last minute tax writeoffs. One of the best tax writeoffs, of course, is a charitable contribution. Then I remind myself that donating to charity isn’t just about the tax writeoff - it has the ancilliary benefit of helping others,too. :-)

And that’s why I like Toronto-based Favorville, too. It’s a web 2.0 company that has the ancillary benefit of helping others.

The basic system is: register and post if you need a favor or have a favor to give. Things I see on the site now include a post for a free mattress, and a request for help writing a wikipedia article. After favors are completed, members are asked to make a rating of the other person. And if you help someone or are helped, the other person is automatically added to your network.

Favorville is young and has very little traffic. Usually I’d wait for things to develop a little more before posting on something like this, but given the feel-good angle to the company, I’m going to point to them now. Maybe we can do them a favor, and kickstart the network.

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This entry was posted on Friday, December 30th, 2005 at 3:51 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  1. Peter Cooper

    December 30th, 2005 at 4:49 pm

    Nice design over there! They could do well.

    I wonder if the end-of-year thing is why I’ve seen a big flurry of signups in the last week.. my end of year is the usual (for the UK) April 5th, but forgot about the US.. :)

  2. Joseph

    December 30th, 2005 at 5:10 pm

    Just checked out favorville.com. It’s like craigslist with user accountability! It’s true that 2005 was like the goldrush year for peer to peer networking sites, but I think you’re right, this may be one of the diamonds in the rough…

  3. Ken Yarmosh

    December 30th, 2005 at 5:13 pm

    They should use the Wink tagline with a twist:

    People. Powered. Favors.

    By the way, what do you call someone from Favorville? A Favorvillian?

    I’m pretty sure you are Favorville’s most favorite Favorvillian at this point, as that was no small favor.

    Have a Happy New Year, Mike…and do a favor for yourself, relax!

  4. Rachel C

    December 30th, 2005 at 5:33 pm

    Nice concept. Are there any other sites doing this sort of thing in other locations that you know of?

  5. Anonymis

    December 30th, 2005 at 8:01 pm

    a favorvillite

  6. Dave McClure

    December 30th, 2005 at 8:51 pm

    Mike -

    check out http://www.Unitus.com — they’re sort of like a venture model for microfinance institutions. they do terrific work around the world by investing in groups that in turn lend money to the working poor. [full disclosure: i’m a board member]

    they’ve put about $10-15M to work in 8-9 microfinance institutions around the world (India, Africa, Mexico, etc) and currently reach over half a million people.

    imho, they’re the best place to donate funds to (although the funds they place are in for-profit institutions, they themselves are a non-profit).

    your $100 acts like ~$1,000-$5,000 in local currency, and can change someone’s life forever.

    for more info, check out my post on the Silicon Valley Microfinance Network blog here:
    http://svmn.wordpress.com/2005.....ay-unitus/

    regards & happy holidays,

    - dave mcclure
    http://www.unitus.com

  7. Michael Arrington

    December 30th, 2005 at 8:54 pm

    Dave, I read about unitus.com in biz20 or wired at some point (or something just like it). I’d love to get involved with this somehow - the dollars cost per changing people’s lives ratio seems outstanding.

  8. missmarymac

    December 30th, 2005 at 10:29 pm

    thanks for the good words, Michael and Dave. very useful sites. look forward to what you both have to say in the new year!

  9. Kyle

    December 31st, 2005 at 9:38 am

    That’s a cool concept, and I hope it picks up. I could actually see it becoming more of social network for designers/developers, etc. I know a lot of designers who aren’t programmers, and vice versa. A small favorville button that people could identify with on their site might help them in some small way to build traffic.

    Cool site, thanks.

  10. Parv

    December 31st, 2005 at 1:10 pm

    Mike, this write up is greatly appreciated!.

    We’ve been live (beta) for just a month now and the response has been,
    quite honestly, overwhelming. Thanks to you we’ve seen a tremendous
    amount of new registrations and tons of positive feedback. Watch for
    new features in the New Year.

    Happy New Year to you and all your readers!

    The Favorville Team

  11. Marcelo Ruiz

    January 1st, 2006 at 10:25 am

    Very interesting site and a really cool idea, but they don’t allow me to register from Buenos Aires, Argentina :(

  12. Richard

    January 1st, 2006 at 10:51 am

    I checked out Favorville and the concept is good, but would hate to see it taken over buy > for money and not just favors

  13. Marc

    January 2nd, 2006 at 11:34 am

    I suggest using Multiply for this sort of thing because it lets you communicate with your social network. The site shows you exactly how you’re related to everyone in your network, so you know who you’re dealing with right off the bat, as opposed to sites where you’re reaching out to strangers.

  14. Norman

    January 2nd, 2006 at 6:24 pm

    I think reaching out to strangers is the idea of Favorville.

  15. manfmnantucket

    January 3rd, 2006 at 8:16 pm

    Hi,

    I like the graphics and use of keyword tags on favorville - is that what makes it “2.0″?

    Yet there are plenty of these kinds of sites around. Perhaps the largest is Friendly Favors:
    http://www.livingdirectory.net/FF/
    FF has 48K members, around since 1999.

    Then there’s the GoodNeighborsNet / NeighborRing.org family of neighborhood resource nets.

    Hmm, then there are the “time dollars” family of sites - these are based around using service credits as per Edgar Cahn, see http://www.timebanks.org .

    There’s also timebanks-like, but more commercial sites like http://www.DayLo.com and
    TimeBux.com

    I probably left out a few…

    Any comments on how FavorVille is new/different?

    thanks

  16. mark

    January 3rd, 2006 at 8:20 pm

    Richard, does Multiply label the links between users? This is what neighbor ring does too - the idea is that you can distinguish between people who are arbitrarily linked (e.g. online “friends”) and chains of real-life relationships with higher degrees of trust. This is really helpful when deciding whether to say let someone into your house to do work, or lending someone your rototiller.

  17. paul

    January 9th, 2006 at 2:07 pm

    this is very VERY much like http://www.freecycle.org, except for the TAG and yahoo group portion

  18. rado rohal

    June 10th, 2006 at 1:35 am

    Good idea but where is Slovak Republic?

  19. Centro Commerciale

    September 22nd, 2006 at 3:51 am

    It’s real?? i can’t believe that it works

  20. brettbum

    December 3rd, 2006 at 8:54 pm

    I’ve been on Favorville since last spring, a friend of Parv’s recommended me to the site.

    I do like Favorville, but I’ve found that even when favors are provided the feedback loop by the recipient is often left wide open. Even when they gush with enthusiasm over the help they have received, something makes it slightly awkward to actually close the loop and provide a rating for the person that provided the favor.

    Plus, the site has a bit of a bias for linking together people from one local as opposed to people all over the world. The original site was more open to the world when most of the members were only in Toronto, but as its grown there has been an emphasis to help people in your region with a favor as opposed to providing or receiving a favor from the entire globe.

    I think this perspective works against the benefits that the internet can provide in this type of community.

    Overall, I like the site and think it has excellent potential. I look forward to future refinements and hope it grows into its own.

  21. hard cock

    January 5th, 2007 at 7:52 am

    My mind is like a fog, not that it matters. I just don’t have much to say these days. That’s how it is. I haven’t been up to anything recently.
    My life’s been basically boring. Not much on my mind today. I’ve just been letting everything pass me by recently, but such is life. Basically nothing seems worth bothering with, but eh. It’s not important. I’ve just been hanging out doing nothing.
    Not much on my mind recently. Basically nothing seems important. So it goes. Today was a complete loss.

  22. mark

    January 6th, 2007 at 1:43 am

    how can everyone seem to like favorville, but I can’t see where, one year later, it’s growing at all?

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