| URL | darudar.org |
|---|---|
| Slogan | Give away and receive as a gift to make the world better |
| Commercial? | No |
| Type of site | Giving-away service, Community |
| Registration | Invite or Application |
| Available language(s) | Multilingual |
| Launched | September 22, 2008 |
| Revenue | Donations and Google AdSense |
| Current status | Active |
DaruDar is an international community where people give away things, their skills and time to each other for absolutely free requiring nothing in return. The community is based on principles of self-organization. Main condition of participation is following the rules of gift giving[1] and communication[2] set on the site. The global mission of DaruDar[3] is to create a widespread social practice of gift-giving, to make it a daily and routine act. Words like “lot”, “exchange”, “freebie”, “junk”, “crap” are considered obscene on DaruDar.
On 22 September 2008 service was launched in Russian. It was created by four friends who had worked with Habrahabr project earlier. They were inspired by flashmob, Kropotkin and Gandhi ideas.
With collaborative help of the community service was translated into English in 2010.
Contents |
Darudar users call themselves comembers (means "community members"). DaruDar gift is a thing, skill or service of a comember that he/she wants to give away to someone. In order to offer a gift a comember creates a publication describing what he gives. Other comembers can wish it. Later the gift giver chooses someone to promise their gift. Every gift can be commented, wished, promised and thanked. Only those offers which simultaneously satisfy all three of the following conditions and cannot exist without them should be considered gifts on Darudar:
For example text or image file cannot be a gift as in fact they both are gifts for all. Despite the fact that formally it may be a gift some of them should not be given away on Darudar[4].
The main feature of this gift-giving service is it's mechanisms enable people to make clever choices about whom to give their things to (what they feel are appropriate). Due to this mechanisms things are distributed to be as useful for people as the things could be at the time.
Darudar as a service of gift giving has a search and filtering tools. Looking for interesting or wanted things, skills or services by search you can optionally specify results by geographical location, possibility of sending by post, thematic categories, languages etc.
Groups are a collaborative comember-created filters. Each group brings together people of similar interests. Group members can cooperate to filter and recommend gifts of special interest for them to the group.
The gift giver promises their gift to one of the wishers. After meeting and receiving the gift the wisher should write thanks for this gift. It can contain text, image or video which will prove that the gift handover was fulfilled. All written thanks are collected into comember's profile.
You can keep giving away the gift you have received and get involved into "gift crossing". All gifts involved into the gift-crossing have their own individual story. One can always see who gave this gift away to whom.
Daronomics is a global statistical section of community gift giving[5]. It shows how many cities are involved into the gift giving, global pulse of gift giving for the past three months, the number of comembers registered on the site, the total number of gifts etc. The same information is available for each city.
Each comember has to follow the traditions of DaruDar[1]. Essentially there is a list of principles how the gift giver or the wisher should behave in certain cases. In addition to the basic principles, traditions also include the following issues:
Furthermore comembers can help and guide each other using disapproval tools, public responses, vox populi and wardens help.