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Giving to charity is a tweet for web shoppers
Mark Prigg, Science and Technology Correspondent18.05.09
An internet entrepreneur is set to raise thousands of pounds for charity after working out how to make money from Twitter.
Alicia Navarro, 32, from Islington, could be the first person to turn the social networking site into an income stream.
The project, called good.ly, allows people to recommend items such as books and clothes by putting a link on Twitter.
When a person clicks on the link, they go to the retailer's website. If they buy the item, a proportion of the sale price goes to a charity — currently Dogs Trust, a fund for rehoming, or Crisis for homeless people.
Miss Navarro said: “I'm a huge fan of Twitter, but I really wanted to use it for something a bit more useful. I had already developed most of the technology for a commercial version so it was relatively simple to alter it for Twitter.”
To use the service, users log on to a shopping website and go to the page that shows the item they want to recommend. They then copy its webpage address into a text box at
www.good.ly.
When they press return, good.ly creates a message — or tweet — with the link on the Twitter website.
A commercial version of the system is being sold to publishing companies.
Miss Navarro's firm, Skimlinks, which is based in Shoreditch, recently bucked the credit crunch to gain funding for the project.
The entrepreneur, who has been shortlisted for a prize at the National Business Awards, said: “There is an incredible number of internet firms around.
"It's amazing how London has become a real world centre for dotcom entrepreneurs, and there is a real feeling that despite the economic climate, people are beginning to set up firms and use technology to save money.”
http://good.ly/
