From the very beginning Socialblood was designed to be very powerful, very capable, but also remarkably simple to use.
Back when we started the project in June 2011 our idea was just to create a tool that connects blood donors and recipients using Facebook as the underlying medium and nothing more than that.
Slowly but steadily the idea went viral, from my shared office in Bangalore to people in Brazil, Pakistan, Thailand – it became more like a local community project – people requested for blood groups in their countries.
After spending a considerable time on the project and understanding the whole blood donation sector,we realized we are dealing with a humongous problem.
The reality set in gradually, the whole process and experience of donating blood hasn’t changed all that much since the1950’s!
The blood banks across the globe were operating pretty old-school despite the technological leaps all around, and sadly there was little they had done to change the donor experience. In short, the sector was badly in need of innovation.
That turned out to be the Eureka! moment for our team. We envisaged, that when a billion people can log onto Facebook, why can’t some good Samaritans among them donate blood utilizing the same platform while putting an end to the global blood crisis?
Socialblood can help you,your friends,family and neighbors when in need of blood.
Early on we’ve decided to build a very social platform lets you know about the blood group of your friends along with their locations, all neatly integrated onto a map, so that you know whom to call first during an emergency.
The platform is designed to not just keep you connected with your friends, but also with your community as a whole so that if someone two blocks away needs blood, you’ll get a notification and a call for action. You can enlist yourself for donation with a click, whereas if you are not available for some reason, you can actually discover that who else in your friends circle has the same blood type and you can ask them to donate instead.
I would like to share a classic example of a man from Hyderabad who posted a request on socialblood looking for blood donors for his daughter who was suffering from a heart disease. Within 24 hours he got 70 calls from perfect strangers who are willing to help. That’s the power of Facebook and human connections at large.
Socialblood will disrupt the way hospitals and blood banks operate,recruit blood donors and retain them.
Its 2013 and still most of the blood banks in America and even across the globe rely on excel sheets to manage donor data and they send post cards to notify them about their next donation date. I am not kidding!
How can Facebook help? is the common expression by most of the blood bank managers and donor recruiters.
Frankly speaking, I think for this generation Facebook is the most powerful thing on the planet, above the planet and below the planet. Period.
Our immediate mission is to enable blood banks across the United States to adopt Socialblood in their day to day activities and helping donors to make every aspect of blood donation social.
Blood banks will benefit a great deal from Socialblood and the use of social technology in general, they can request blood from people in their community, share stories and keep them informed.
In fact, Socialblood is all about stories.
We strongly believe that people are not motivated by dry facts and theories but by stories,stories that touch hearts, stories that they can relate to. For instance, when we tell you that someone needs blood every 3 seconds in this country, you might say, “Oh! That’s a mind boggling statistic!” while sitting around being a vegetable.
But when I tell you about a story of a fellow, of some acquaintance who got overwhelmed under hardship due to need of blood for a loved one, someone who had expectations from people around and who finally got to smile due to the camaraderie; this is something you can relate to and this could possibly propel you into taking action. If this can’t, I don’t know what will!
The Future
We are committed 100% towards building a great product. And we think that if we succeed,we have a future as a standalone company capable of making a dent in the Universe.
And that’s where our focus is. We often think about how fortunate we are, to have found an opportunity that is so universal yet so unexplored, so that we can help people along, drop-by-drop.
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