I'm all for making charity-giving more prevalent and front of mind.
However, I do feel quite uncomfortable that this seems to gamify the process.
IMO there should be no ranking system. Wanting to be seen as the 'most-charitable' is the wrong way to look at giving.
The share system should just to be raise awareness of the app but not that you beat the 'weekly contributions'.
Also how do they know that some people are tapping genuinely? How much are the donations? Where can people see the benefit the money is doing?
You can see their video here:
Google should do that natively. Going through dozens of watermarked pictures is a waste of time, it turns people away from google images for search. But maybe it's just a non-representative, edge use-case for them.
We appreciate the feedback from everyone, and the exposure. This is a challenging issue to attempt to address using technology, and we know our solution is far from perfect. Thank you for helping us to get a bit closer.
We built WeShelter as the simplest method to allow people to act on their empathetic response to the issue of homelessness and to the human beings they encounter that need help. We hope that by offering WeShelter, more people will do something, and over time will become more involved in addressing the issue through volunteerism and direct giving.
Our 2.0 roadmap already includes many of the insights that folks have pointed out here, including highlighting community activity over individual performance, illustrating value of donations given, and feedback on the good work being done by partner organizations that serve the homeless and those at risk of becoming homeless. We're also expanding beyond NYC, and seeking to partner more closely with organizations that do homeless outreach to reduce the friction of requesting assistance for an individual.
In addition to the great video NowThisNews put together for us, we recently were featured on Fox News: http://video.foxnews.com/v/46734...
WeShelter is an entirely volunteer-run, non-profit organization. Thank you to everyone who has contributed.
Makerpad
WeShelter