Our Core Values are very near and dear to us, I wrote them nearly 10 years ago when I imagined what a platform could, should and should not be. They haven’t changed since then. But one is particularly important to the product direction we take. It’s this one:
We sell our product, not our users.
We are building a service that is focused on the best environment for Organisations to operate in. Our vision is to never sell your personal data, content, feed, interests, clicks, or anything else to advertisers. We will publish links to the best resources and deals, but we’ll never push these on you. We promise.
I was reminded of this when I was reading about Medium, who had this neat table explaining why their platform has been built for their key customers and not advertisers. Simply, it stated the reasons they hold this position –reasons we constantly talk about here at Tidy:
When organisations ask us to not charge them as much through offsetting through advertising I often point to these types of reasons. As a team you start to lose focus, you start to think about how many views an advert might get instead of how easy it is to purchase an event ticket or membership.
The experience for the supporter or member is the most important thing we can be focusing on. We spend hundreds of hours researching, discussing and debating what makes their experience the best it can be. Advertising pollutes this and creates potential confusion and noise to that experience.
The large majority of our customers work really, really hard to get their own sponsors. Usually, they’re local shops or suppliers that are doing their bit for the community. Overriding these hard fought local suppliers with Google’esque ads we feel would effectivley undermine all of the hard and brilliant work that administrators and volunteers do to attract and retain those sponsors.
We are built for the people. Not the advertisers.