Fajoya Pushes Goodwill By Letting Friends Help Each Other


    Since Facebook went public a year ago, it has started actively exploring possibilities for monetization and introduced many new features, which in fact seem to be pretty disruptive for users. This situation opens a lot of opportunities for Facebook-based application developers to improve users’ social media experience.

    Espoo-based Fajoya builds a mobile app that allows Facebook users to help request, receive and reward favors from their friends. It aims to accomplish a social mission — to make the world a better place where helping others is something everyone wants to do.

    Yakir Falik, co-founder of Fajoya, says, “Helping your friends makes you feel better.” Therefore, Fajoya believes possible awareness of what your friends need is a desirable thing to have.

    Here is how the app works: you login through Facebook account, create a request or respond to requests of your friends which are visible in the feed, with possibility to comment or have a private chat. Once the solution has been found, you can communicate “thank you” note for the rest of the community. “Helping others makes you feel good and gives you a goodwill identity”, adds Falik.

    Facebook is currently the most commonly used platform for sending requests to friends. However, according to Fajoya’s research, majority of people don’t feel comfortable with requesting a favor on Facebook. “Facebook is a special kind of social environment. People think that shifting a conversation to requesting might be perceived as bothersome when shown to the wrong group of people”, explains Matthew Jones, the co-founder of Fajoya. The reason is pretty straightforward – Facebook lacks proper management tools. Managing friends’ lists is a weak feature of Facebook. On top of that, request updates may be simply lost in a news feed or not even shown to a majority of your friends.

    Considering that there is no specially dedicated service of this kind, Fajoya seems to be addressing the right needs of social network users, aiming to unlock people’s goodwill.

    “We want to give users a tool to monitor if your friends need help and make helping easier. Fajoya is a place where you can be comfortable with asking your friends to help because the app gives you control over exposure of your request – you can define which lists of your friends are going to see it”, comments Falik.

    The application is entirely for free. The startup’s monetization happens in the very end of the process and relies on people’s goodwill. If happy receivers of friends’ favor want to show appreciation for the help, they have an option to send a gift. The start-up receives affiliate compensation from bought gifts.

    Having investment proposal from Finish VC, Fajoya wants to go far enough to create a real engagement service that will boost a behavioral change. The application is going to be launched in about two-three months from now both at App Store and Play Store. In the meantime, Beta registration is open and those signed up will get a little bonus in the form of priority access when the application is launched.