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Posted by Ethereal on February 18, 2024 at 2:25 PM UTC.

Our latest deployment is now complete; with the following changes / fixes.

The backend architecture has been changed to take a different approach.
When your rematch gifter marks as a gift as sent; this is now properly reflected on the giftee side (including with tracking).
We have fixed an issue where rematch proof wasn't properly showing in the admin side; meaning our team didn't see all uploaded proof.
We have fixed a number of historical issues where completed exchanges / rematches were not displaying as completed.
We have put a number of performance improvements in place.
We have resolved the caching issue that led to platform instability.

We have identified an issue where if you have proof approved, to a giftee has since been deleted - and the giftee was deleted prior to v7; an exchange may show as active. We've fixed a number of these, and will be retrospectively resolving the others.

If you encounter any new bugs in the next day or so; please let us know so we can resolve this.

This is also an announcement that we are formally deprecating the existing mobile application; the API server for the application will remain online however until we have a viable replacement in place.

Posted by Ethereal on November 5, 2023 at 5:47 PM UTC.

So, we screwed up. A shift in how we notify users led to our first batch mailing test for Happy Holidays to be sent today; where it rapidly became apparent that there was a misconfiguration of everybody being sent emails via the to field, as opposed to the bcc field. This means that other people could see the email addresses of other users (within a group of 750 users).

As it stands, we are indefinitely freezing all development on the platform until we decide the next steps following this breach; and following the outcome of the report to the ICO.

Timeline of Events

At 1651, we used our new batch mailing software to send out a notification that Happy Holidays was live for registration.
At 1700, we were made aware that this had inadvertently exposed user email addresses to other users on the platform.
At 1728, we completed a report to the ICO (https://ico.org.uk/) to report this breach to them; and took the step to freeze all development.
At 1736, we realised we sent the emails in chunks of 750; which limits exposure.

If you are worried about your data, you can take the following steps to remove your account from the platform:

Navigate to the My Account page.
Click Security.
Click Delete Account. We will be prioritising deletion requests as a matter of urgency in the next 10 days.

Posted by Ethereal on April 10, 2023 at 5:57 PM UTC.

V6 is now live. You may need to log out and back in, or things... might not work.

Awards are blank as we've yet to award any! V2 of the mobile app is also now live, you'll need to update as the old application will no longer work.

Changes Mobile view in a browser is the same view as the app itself.
Greater clarity of information across the board.
Massive performance improvements.
Admin functionality in app and mobile views.
Proof now makes sense to a person who has uploaded it.
Login with Google, Apple and username/password works across the board.
Gallery flow is improved.
Awards are now present. I mean, we still need to figure out our first set of awards... but it works!
The ability to import an Amazon wishlist.
Minimum spend caps are now in place on a per-level basis.
Comment deletion actually works.
More admin functionality.
Premium gifting.
Direct rematching is back.
Rematching on a per country basis.
Improved app stability.
Performance improvements to image processing.
Improvements to the notifications engine.
UI/UX improvements.
Many bugs fixed, far too many.

Posted by Ethereal on December 11, 2022 at 7:58 PM UTC.

We've been hard at work in the past couple of months, and are now happy to share the fact that our mobile applications are now available to our general user base.

The app features a redesigned UI for mobile, lots of quality of life improvements, push notifications and more.

Android
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.givin.gifts

iOS
https://testflight.apple.com/join/6ELpgk1Q

We're still waiting on iOS app review, but in the interim - you can join us via TestFlight.

Known Bugs
The tab bar won't reflect the correct navigation point if jumping from a notification.
Message threads not appearing in inbox in order (also an issue on web).
After deleting a user exchange, if you navigate back, you get a broken exchange page.
Google Login on Android is currently not working, this is currently disabled on Android (you can reset your password and login via the conventional method as a workaround).

Posted by Ethereal on October 30, 2022 at 9:59 PM UTC.

So, let's start with mobile.

Development is coming along nicely, and we're still hoping for a release relatively soon! The Givin Gifts mobile applications include a custom user interface, far more sensible navigation, push notifications - and much, much more. We genuinely cannot wait for you to see what we've been doing.

Now, that leads me on to my next point. We're an unfunded non-profit staffed entirely by volunteers, and to be blunt, times have been lean in terms of premium memberships and donations. We don't have advertising, we're not backed by a company the size of reddit... we rely purely on the generosity of the community in order to operate.

What does that mean? It means we need your help. We've set a donation target of $3,750 to set us up for the next 12 months - and we're fairly confident that we can meet it, as we know how awesome our community is.

Posted by Ethereal on October 5, 2022 at 1:47 AM UTC.

So, v5 is now here! Upon launch, there are some bugs - but nothing that prevents us from launching, and we'll get them resolved within the next day or so (part of our feature set is a phased launched anyway!).

Things To Know
1. We are unable to migrate two-factor secrets, so the small handful of people (and I mean that literally) who use it will have to re-enable it as a part of phase 2.
2. We've discovered why people weren't receiving email, the notification settings on a global level basically decided they didn't want to play anymore. We have had to reset all notification preferences to the default. Please update them accordingly.
3. For the next 24 hours, the support team will only deal with THE WORLD IS BURNING enquiries, whilst we deal with necessary bug fixes.
4. We have disabled all automation for the next 24 hours.

Known Bugs
On the account page, when updating your profile - if you don't have all three accordions open, it won't let you save changes. Estimated Resolution: 5th October.
Rematch receiving and sending statuses have gone very weird. These will be rebuilt. Estimated Resolution: 5th October.
Gallery. Filters under "show more exchanges" decided to stop working in live. Estimated Resolution: 5th October. Possibly within the next 20 minutes however...

Phase 2 (5th October)
1. The ability to enable 2FA.
2. Statistics page.
3. EU + EUW matching group.
4. Private Exchange Management - Download report.

Phase 3 (9th October)
1. One-time phone numbers for premium members.
2. Direct rematching. We are temporarily having to disable this after having encountered some "HOW IS THIS EVEN HAPPENING" level bugs during testing this evening.
3. A few small bug fixes we have identified, but that are not critical.
4. Shipping labels are finally coming back.
5. Multiple images for an exchange, that rotate.
6. Gallery awards.

Posted by Ethereal on April 10, 2022 at 11:54 AM UTC.

Hi!

So, you may have just received the same email over and over in what seemed to be a never-ending loop. Our batch mailer system was failing part-way through and requeuing everything, which it isn't supposed to do. We've made changes to prevent this happening again, and apologise for any inconvenience caused.

- Squirrel.

Posted by Ethereal on April 2, 2022 at 12:33 PM UTC.

Account Page
There have been numerous quality of life improvements made to the account page, as well as the ability to toggle multiple settings. You can access these settings from the "Settings" dropdown on this page.
  • - Emails
    Toggle which emails are sent to you.
  • - Matching Preferences
    Disable or enable relative level matching.
  • - Rematching
    Disable or enable direct rematching. This defaults to off.
  • - Security
    Enable two-factor authentication.
  • - Site Preferences
    Select which font to use on the site. Our default, or OpenDyslexic.
  • - Social Media Visibility
    Toggle social media visibility on your public profile.
In addition, you can now access your global wishlist from here - which is where you put wishes that will be displayed on all of your exchanges.
 
My Exchanges
There is now a "My Exchanges" page (Exchanges > My Exchanges). It kind of does what it says, it displays your exchanges - so why not go take a look?
 
Reporting No Gift
You now have the ability to opt-out of rematching when reporting no gift and receive double experience in return.
 
Address Label View
When viewing a match, there is now an option to click "Print Address Label" which will take you to a page displaying only the address.
 
Dual Gallery Posts
If by some twist of fate you receive a gift from both your original gifter and a rematch gifter, you are now able to thank both of them with gallery posts!
 
Message Attachments
You are now able to send image attachments with messages.
 
Direct Rematching
v4 introduces direct rematching. If you enable this, users will be able to see you as a direct rematchee from the required rematchers page. From here, they can view your profile and decide to allocate with you instantly if they think they'd be a good gifter for you!
 
Private Exchanges
You now have the ability to add questions when creating a private exchange. We've also enabled report generation and the ability to remove users or delete an exchange.
 
FAQ
The FAQ has received a revamp. Go read it!
 
User Interface
As you can see, numerous changes have been made to the overall user interface.
 
Coming Tomorrow
Some changes will be coming in a secondary deployment tomorrow:

Automated reminders to giftees to post, including a suspension if required. Applies to March batch onwards.
Awards (applies to March batch onwards).
Manage questions from premium exchange management page.
Shipping labels (purchasing).
Viewing a single reddit gifts post.
 
Coming Soon
Our mobile app is under development, and will be completed soon!

Posted by Ethereal on March 23, 2022 at 9:08 PM UTC.

So, we need rematchers. There's no other way to put it. In the infancy of a platform like this one, there are bound to be bad actors - and whilst we've weeded most of them out, there are still people left behind who were impacted by them.

Our legacy rematch drive was a success, so we've decided to go one better.

In the month of April, anybody who signs up to be a rematch gifter and subsequently successfully completes it - will get one free month of premium for each successful rematch. What more can we say? Rematch gifts will be verified they meet the minimum requirements for an exchange, in order to prevent people sending a $2 gift and trying to game the system (we doubt people will do it, but we always have to prepare for the worst).

Have fun gifting!

Posted by Ethereal on February 13, 2022 at 12:41 PM UTC.

It's time for another state of the union update.
Statistics
Gifts Sent: 6,988
Average Value: $40.63
Total Value Sent: $283,912.85

Statistics for each exchange in terms of successfully sent gifts are available on each page. For example, Happy Holidays achieved a 91% success rate - and this is still ongoing. There are admittedly a couple of exchanges in the mid seventies, but the bad actors will be weeded out as a result of this.

However, when we take in to account the amount of people reporting no gift (success rate percentages get a little weird when both involved parties never send anything, or the person receives a gift but never posts it) - only 70 people are in need of a rematcher.

Now, we ban and suspend people with regularity. We're slowly but surely building up our database of bad actors.

Banned Users: 122
Suspended Users: 349
Blacklisted Addresses: 97
Policy For Received Gifts
Moving forward, a giftee will have a specific numbers of days from the close of the shipping deadline to post their received gift, where valid shipping proof was accepted for a gift. Obviously, we appreciate that some gifts will still be in transit - and will be taking this in to consideration.

Domestic: 7 days.
International: 14 days.
Worldwide: 21 days.

After this point, a giftee will be suspended until they comply with this policy - or provide a valid reason.
Policy For Sent Gifts (Rematch)
Moving forward, rematch gifters will have the same 2 week policy applied to them that standard gifters have, along with the requirement for proof, suspension, etc.
Policy For Received Gifts (Rematch)
Moving forward, a rematch giftee will have a specific amount of time from shipping proof being accepted to post their rematch gift in the gallery.

Domestic: 10 days.
International: 21 days.
Worldwide: 28 days.

After this point, a rematch giftee will be suspended until they comply with this policy - or provide a valid reason.
Policy Start Dates
These policies will fully take effect as of Feb 21st, 2022. We will be reaching out to parties this will impact ahead of time.
Social Media Policy
Whilst we will always allow constructive criticism on social media (e.g. Reddit, Discord) - there is a difference between constructive criticism and constant negative discussion from a person. In this scenario, if the person is not willing to work with us, we will be limiting their ability to post on our social media. Neither me nor my co-founder are willing to allow the volunteer members of our team be attacked for giving up their time, any longer.
Security
You are now able to activate two-factor authentication from your account page.

Posted by Ethereal on January 16, 2022 at 6:04 PM UTC.

Hey Everyone, Baron (Taylor) here! So who's behind Givin Gifts? We're a mix n' match of folks, most are either in the UK or in the USA, but that's liable to change as we expand. I'm truly honored to work with everybody here, they've made a spark of an idea into a beautiful reality.

Senior Team

Our senior team is the group that makes the big decisions, deals with the financial items, and plans the course of the organization.

Ethereal Squirrel (Ryan):
Squirrel has been here since day one, and works on... well... there are too many things to list. He's our combined CTO/COO and... well, is basically the coding wizard. When not doing GG work, he's likely doing other sorts of work. He is fueled by caffeine.

TJ (TJ):
TJ is the CFO for Givin Gifts and a member of the senior team. They are responsible for wrangling the accounts for the org into some sort of shape and keeping track of our income and expenses. They are a U.K. accountant who specializes in building data models so will also be modelling some analytics on our data. When not doing GG work they write creative fiction, usually medieval style fantasy. They’ve been playing RuneScape since it started 21 years ago. They also have a Disney pin badge addiction.

Baron (Taylor):
Taylor co-founded Givin Gifts in June as a way to continue the wonderful tradition started by Reddit Gifts. He works on community engagement, inter-team communication, and organizing items in the background. When not doing GG work, he enjoys being a total nerd about Magic the Gathering, metal music, video games, and all things tech, as well as spending time with his wonderful wife.

Now we have our Department Heads, who oversee our design, support, and social media ops:

lizziety:
Lizzie is the Head of Support for Givin Gifts. When she is not answering your support tickets you can find her watching anime, playing Minecraft, or spending time with her 2 cute kitties! She is also studying public health in college and in her free time will also work as a crisis counselor for the crisis text line.

Melon:
MelonPen is the Lead Designer for Givin Gifts and creates the mascot designs for each of our exchanges. She also manages our merchandising and other design projects. Her love of drawing and designing came from Japanese inspired fashion and cute characters like Hello Kitty, Rilakkuma, and Pokemon. In her downtime, she loves baking, cross stitching, taking care of houseplants, and cuddling her cat.

Snoopy:

Snoopy is our head of social media. He's responsible for making sure the social media team are all on the same page and that content gets out there in a steady fashion. He also works with the senior team to look at how we can continually develop our online presence. Away from Givin Gifts, he's likely to be found sailing around the Sea of Thieves, nose-deep in a good book, or sleeping on his dice hoard.

croag:
Croag is the Head of UI / UX for Givin Gifts. She ensures new features or iterations to our website are user friendly and align to our brand. She has worked both across development and design, but recently has focused on and is increasingly passionate about accessibility and inclusive design and development. Outside of Givin Gifts, you will find her either playing social deduction games, losing at pub quizzes, on the stage singing musical theatre, or napping.

Now we have the rest of our wonderful staff!

BronwenN:
Bronwen is one of our support team. If you’ve put in a support ticket, you’re likely to converse with her and she’s in charge of shipping proof so if you’ve submitted proof, she’ll be the one reviewing. When not working on the platform, you’ll likely find Bronwen curled up with a book, hunkered down sewing or getting muddy in a park with her kids.

Alice:
Alice is the head of Reddit for givin gifts. When she’s not working in the pharmacy or moderating the subreddit you can find her listening to kpop, or watching Korean dramas, or Korean variety shows! As well as in her spare time will build Lego or play Dungeons and Dragons!

thatguyneedsasusername:
Alex helps the support team tend to users. He's fresh blood so he'll make all the mistakes, but hey, everyone has to start from somewhere. He enjoys just about everything and tries just about anything as long as that sweet sweet friendship gets injected into his veins.

Urielsalis:
Urielsalis is a developer for Givin Gifts, mostly in the matching engine and part of the RG archiving tool. When not doing GG work, he works at his actual job at Twilio, volunteers for Minecraft and the Discord moderator program, They have too many plushies and nerdy t shirts plus a cute doggo.

Jewels:
Jewels is part of the social media team. She runs the Instagram account and Facebook page. She works as a care giver & is in school to be part of the medical field. When not making or responding to posts for GG, she is a nerd that is usually reading, listening to music, playing with pets, or learning random things. She also collects books and some kpop merch.

ZombieCreatures:
ZombieCreatures is part of the social media team, and runs the Twitter account. When not writing tweets, she works as a freelance educator and hopes to go back to university to get her Masters degree in Cyber Security. She enjoys history (especially Irish and Nordic), listening to music, improving upon Harry Potter canon and nerding out about LotR and Witcher, and collecting both stamps and old books.

Rachelguy72:
Rachel joined the Givin Gifts team in October as a support team member! Residing in the Lone Star State; Rachel enjoys scrolling Reddit, kayaking, collecting Disney Pins, and hanging out with her significant other and their two furry kiddos!

That's the entire team right now! We are all honored to serve the community and keep the wonderful tradition of gift-giving alive. Every one of the folks here has done some pretty amazing things for Givin Gifts, and I could not be prouder to call them my team, and we're all excited for the future of Givin Gifts, and to many, many more gifts shipping out around the world!

Posted by Ethereal on November 5, 2021 at 12:00 AM UTC.

We don't always get things right, and the way we dealt with gifts not being marked as received or sent for batch 1 is one of them.

So, moving forward - we're going to change the way our automated process works. How we contact people in relation to it, etc.

The new process is as follows:

1. 1 day after shipping deadline. Gifter is emailed if a gift has not been marked as shipped.

2. 7 days after shipping deadline. If there is no verifiable tracking or shipping proof, or a gift is simply not marked as shipped, we contact the giftee asking them to confirm whether or not they have received a gift.

3. 3 days after the second stage. We contact the gifter informing them that their giftee has stated they have not received a gift, that we have no verifiable proof of shipping and that in 96 hours they will be temporarily suspended from signing up to new exchanges until the situation is resolved.

4. After 96 hours, we will temporarily suspend those people who have either not marked a gift as shipped or provided valid proof of shipping. This will not apply to those people who reach out to us and explain the situation.

5. 24 hours after the fourth stage, people are put into the rematch pool - and rematchers are provided with the details of who they are sending to.

Posted by Ethereal on October 22, 2021 at 12:00 AM UTC.

Latest updates as of 22nd Oct.

  • Bug: Fixed a bug where the wrong date was appearing on the inbox overview for a thread.
  • Bug: Fixed a bug where invalid characters were being allowed in a gallery URL causing those posts to not be able to be viewed.
  • Bug: Fixed a bug where total number of gifts in a gallery on the "by exchange" view wasn't displaying.
  • Feature: You are now able to message your Gifter from an exchange overview page.
  • Bug: Fixed a bug where the wrong people were receiving a "your giftee has updated their preferences" email.
  • Feature: Premium features are now live.
  • Update: Premium lifetime memberships are now available, as well as the option to pay via PayPal.
  • Feature: Rematching signups are now available.
  • Update: We've changed how things appear on the exchange overview page regarding statuses.
  • Feature: An add comment button has been added to the gallery page to avoid confusion.
  • Feature: As requested, private exchanges you are signed up to now appear on your account page.
  • Feature: You will now receive an email when somebody comments on a gallery post you made.
  • Update: The account page UI has been updated.
  • Feature: We now require you to confirm that you are over 18 years old as a part of the onboarding process.
  • Feature: We now have a step by step process to onboard new users.
  • Feature: The age confirmation page for existing users has been moved to a separate page away from the account page.
  • Update: Russia has been moved to matching group 7.
  • Feature: Starting from the next exchange onwards, you'll be able to set your preferences for what happens if we can't find you a match. Currently, you are bumped to the next tier up automatically (a'la reddit gifts) - but moving forward, you can set a priority order.
  • Feature: You can now specify the action you want to take in terms of premium matching!
  • Bug: An error with private exchange matching has been fixed.
  • Update: Automated emails should now be going out to confirm receipt of gift for the first batch of exchanges where no gallery post has been made.
  • Feature: Logistics. Your address is now prefilled out for you in the sending form, and you are able to select from your current exchanges to prefill the destination address in order to avoid any mistakes. We have also added a disclaimer that you will be sent a link via email to fill out your customs declaration if shipping internationally.

Posted by Ethereal on October 18, 2021 at 12:00 AM UTC.

We've decided to change how our matching preferences work, and move away from the standard policy of bumping somebody up to the next group automatically.

From now on, our matching preferences will let you define an action to take when we are unable to find a match in your selected group. They are defined in priority order, so Domestic > Drop would mean 'drop me from this exchange if you can't find a domestic match', whilst Domestic > International would mean 'try and find me an international match if you can't find a domestic one, but don't drop me instead of bumping me to worldwide'.

These changes will take effect from the Thanksgiving Day exchange onwards.

The matching groups for international can be found on our matching groups page.

Posted by Ethereal on October 18, 2021 at 12:00 AM UTC.

Now, we're happy to hold our hands up and say when something isn't quite right... and you know what wasn't quite right? Our onboarding process. Being thrown at an account page and being told to fill in many fields without much context would confuse people at the best of times. So, we took a look it and thought, "what can we do better?"

Users onboarding for the first time will now be directed through a step by step process which explains what they need to fill in, in far more detail.

If you're interested in taking a look, head over to /account/onboard - but please keep in mind that it will override your existing profile each step of the way.

Posted by Ethereal on October 17, 2021 at 12:00 AM UTC.

We are reverting a change introduced yesterday that required you to enter your date of birth prior to interacting with an exchange. Instead of asking for this level of personal data, it has now been changed to a confirmation dropdown that simply asks you to confirm that you are at least 18 years old.

People who have already entered their date of birth have had their account updated, and we have removed their date of birth from our records.

Posted by Ethereal on October 16, 2021 at 12:00 AM UTC.

We're all about transparency here, so we thought we'd update you on the current statistics from batch 1.

Total Signups: 1150

[ Failures ]
General Failures: 170
Critical Failures: 87
Gifts Received: 15 (People who have marked their gift as received despite no tracking or proof.)

We expect these figures to continue to drop over the next few days.

Now, general failures aren't something we're worried about at this stage. General failures have retrieved their match and sent messages, but haven't submitted any tracking or proof of shipping at this stage. This is why we have a 72 hour buffer from the end of the shipping deadline to submit these details. At this stage, if we haven't heard from the person in question, a suspension flag is placed on their account in order to prevent them from signing up too any more exchanges until the problem is resolved. If they attempt to get around this by making a new account, our detection software throws a permanent ban in their general direction.

If you have reached out to us and have already been told you're going to be placed into the rematching pool for sending, please ignore any automated emails you may accidentally receive. You shouldn't receive them, but bugs can occur!

Now, moving on. Critical failures are the important ones, and people who fall into this category are what usually lead to a rematch. These are the people who haven't engaged at all beyond registering for an exchange at some point. For our first set of exchanges, we were expecting all of these numbers to be much, much higher.

You don't need to contact us in order to be put into the pool for receiving a rematch gift, this will happen automatically - though we may reach out to you if you've already contacted us.

If you're interested in becoming a rematcher, you can signup from any exchange page.

Posted by Ethereal on October 16, 2021 at 12:00 AM UTC.

Following a review of our safeguarding policies, moving forward all users will be required to enter their date of birth prior to interacting with an exchange. This information is never displayed to the public, and is essentially a record that we have asked you to confirm that you are over 18 (in accordance with our terms).

In addition to this, from our next batch onwards - you will also be required to enter a valid phone number for international or worldwide matching.

Posted by Ethereal on October 15, 2021 at 12:00 AM UTC.

To celebrate our first batch of exchanges, we are running a limited offer for our lifetime membership. For the first 100 people to purchase it, our lifetime membership is only $75. If you have already purchase premium and want to upgrade by paying the difference, please contact us and we'll take care of it.
Premium memberships go directly to covering our operational costs and introducing new features. We are a limited by guarantee company, so we don't distribute profits or anything like that.

You can purchase premium from this page.

Posted by Ethereal on October 14, 2021 at 12:00 AM UTC.

Due to popular demand, we have now started accepting PayPal for premium memberships.

You can pay using PayPal by visiting /premium/paypal or clicking Pay via PayPal on the /premium page.

Have fun gifting!

Posted by Ethereal on October 13, 2021 at 12:00 AM UTC.

So, signups for rematching are now live and we thought we'd explain to you how the process works.

Signups for Receiving
You will be automatically placed into the rematching pool for receiving a gift if you meet one of the following criteria (assuming you haven't received a gift).

1. 7 days have passed since the shipping deadline, and your gifter has uploaded no proof of shipping that we are able to verify or provided an acceptable alternative explanation.

2. You have been informed by us that we will be placing you into the pool due to an issue with your gifter.

If we are able to verify that a gift has been shipped, but not received - at this stage, you will not be automatically be placed into the pool for rematching. Please liaise with your gifter and contact the courier used to ship the gift. If after this you still have no joy, open a support ticket and we will investigate.

Signups for Sending
You will be automatically place into the rematching pool for sending a gift if you meet one of the following criteria.

1. You have been informed by us that we will be placing you into the pool due to an issue with your giftee. Issues such as this can normally be attributed to an invalid address and no response from your giftee regarding a correct one.

In addition, you are able to manually signup for rematching 2 days before the shipping deadline of any exchange.

The shipping deadline to send a rematch gift is the same 2 week period as the standard shipping process. Please only signup to become a rematcher if you are able to send a gift, as it would be heartbreaking for a person to fail to receive something twice in the same exchange.

Posted by Ethereal on October 10, 2021 at 12:00 AM UTC.

Premium members now have access to the following.

  1. Access to the concept behind our mascots, including ones we have never released, and concepts for upcoming exchanges.
  2. The ability to create your own exchanges! Once an exchange is created, you simply share the exchange link to the people you want to signup, along with the invitation code (shown on the exchange management page). These exchanges have their own private galleries, wishlists, messaging system, etc - all the features our public exchanges have.
You can access these features from your premium dashboard, which can be found by clicking Access Premium on your account page, or by visiting the following link.

https://givin.gifts/account/premium

Posted by Ethereal on October 8, 2021 at 12:00 AM UTC.

So, I know that some of you like random statistics... so here's a few!

In the period September 7th to October 7th, the following occured.

  • User Signups: 1,833
  • Messages Sent: 1,051
  • Exchange Suggestions: 147

Posted by Ethereal on October 6, 2021 at 12:00 AM UTC.

  • Fixed a bug where images were being rotated upon gallery upload... :D.
  • Fixed a bug where if you changed your exchange preferences on an exchange that had not been matched yet, it would give you an error despite still saving your preferences.
  • Fixed a bug where an invalid URL was being provided on the link from a 'your gift has been received' email.
  • Fixed a bug where the wrong people were getting an email when a gallery post was made. This doesn't impact anything in terms of experience granted.
  • You'll now receive your experience when a giftee marks their gift as received and a gallery post is generated. Don't worry, there's still the route of shipping proof, etc - if they never make a post.
  • As a part of our metrics, we now have an optional addition to the Mark As Shipped form where you can enter how much a gift cost, and how much shipping was. This is only used for anonymized averages.
  • Premium users are now able to select premium only matching.
  • The gallery view has changed. You are now able to browse the gallery by exchange. In addition, 16 gifts are now displayed per page.
  • Fixed a bug where the next exchange panel on the right of the side showed an in-progress exchange.
  • You will now receive an email when your gifter has retrieved your details.
  • You will now receive an email when your gift has been posted to the gallery.
  • You are now able to upload proof of shipping from the exchange overview page.
  • Your gifter will now be emailed when you update your exchange preferences.
  • Your gifters on any open exchanges will now be emailed when you update your account details (e.g. address).
  • As requested, once your gifter has marked your gift as shipped - you'll now see a little info box appear on the actions panel of the exchange page.
  • The latest gallery posts are now displayed on the home page. In addition, new lines now display accurately on messages.
  • Retrieving a match will now show a link to their public profile.
  • Social media is now available on a public profile.

Posted by Ethereal on October 6, 2021 at 12:00 AM UTC.

So, we've finalised our list of exchanges for the year. For now, we've settled on a rolling batch of 3 on the first of each month, with occasional special exchanges beyond that!

Exchange Opens Matches Ship By
All Hallows Day 24th Sep 21 8th Oct 21 22nd Oct 21
Snack Day 1st Oct 21 15th Oct 21 29th Oct 21
Music Day 1st Oct 21 15th Oct 21 29th Oct 21
Thanksgiving Day 14th Oct 21 28th Oct 21 11th Nov 21
Anime Day 1st Nov 21 15th Nov 21 29th Nov 21
Lego Day 1st Nov 21 15th Nov 21 29th Nov 21
Pokemon Day 1st Nov 21 15th Nov 21 29th Nov 21
Happy Holidays 15th Nov 21 29th Nov 21 13th Dec 21
Retro Day 1st Dec 21 15th Dec 21 29th Dec 21
Book Day 1st Dec 21 15th Dec 21 29th Dec 21
Disney Day 1st Dec 21 15th Dec 21 29th Dec 21

Posted by Ethereal on October 2, 2021 at 12:00 AM UTC.

So, we decided to go one step further in our mass releasing of new features today. We've got a good one. When you import your reddit gifts data with us now, we now also display historical data on the site.

Example
https://givin.gifts/profile/Ethereal <-- A profile that has imported data, you'll see a new section with reddit gifts posts.
https://givin.gifts/history/pen-pals-2021/yay-things-gbfpqxjl <-- This is how a historical gallery post looks.

If you're interested in this, you can import your reddit gifts data via the account page.

https://givin.gifts/account

Permission to take a break now?

Posted by Ethereal on October 2, 2021 at 12:00 AM UTC.

So, we have taken our reddit gifts experience tool and gone one step further. You are now able to generate a download an archive of all of your reddit gifts memories! This archive includes any images you have posted, and a text file with the details of the exchanges in question. You can find the tool at the bottom right of your account page, or you can visit our archive page directly.

Currently, you need to have a valid Givin Gifts profile to authenticate against - but we are looking at options for people that don't want to do this. We hope to have something up in the next day or two for this group.

Posted by Ethereal on September 26, 2021 at 12:00 AM UTC.

So, there have been a number of updates to the platform.

  • We have moved to Amazon Web Services for our infrastructure.
  • Current exchanges on the homepage will display a small box with a tick if you are signed up to it.
  • Profile update errors are now properly logged so we can investigate things better if something goes boom.
  • Exchange signup statistics are now on the home page.
  • We have implemented the ability for users to select other languages using a dictionary based pairing system for our content. However, we currently have no other languages so you won't see the dropdown! We're working on getting things translated.
  • Backend changes, FAR TOO MANY TO LIST.
  • As a part of our commitment to offering value to platform users, we now have a Logistics function available on the site (just click Logistics in the nav bar). Via our partnership with a number of carriers, we're able to offer you discounted shipping rates. Currently, this option is only available to people shipping from the United States - we're working on adding more countries! As more and more people use this service, we'll be able to offer better discounts.
  • We have archived the entirety of the reddit gifts gallery. Every post. Every image. We've reached out to reddit to see if we'll be able to display trophies, etc for historical purposes once they're shut down.
  • The maximum filesize upload of a profile avatar image has been raised from 2MB to 8MB.

Posted by Ethereal on September 11, 2021 at 12:00 AM UTC.

So! Here are our tentative exchanges for the rest of the year (this list is not final). We're aiming to do 2 a month from a random selection - in addition to special occasions... and just outright extra ones on occasion!

Exchange Registrations Open Matching Occurs Shipping Deadline
Whimsical Day 10th Sep 21 1st Oct 21 15th Oct 21
Stickers Day 12th Sep 21 1st Oct 21 15th Oct 21
Japan Day 13th Sep 21 1st Oct 21 15th Oct 21
Plushie Day 14th Sep 21 1st Oct 21 15th Oct 21
Movie Day 15th Sep 21 1st Oct 21 15th Oct 21
All Hallows Day 24th Sep 21 8th Oct 21 22th Oct 21
Snack Day 1st Oct 21 15th Oct 21 29th Oct 21
Music Day 1st Oct 21 15th Oct 21 29th Oct 21
Thanksgiving Day 14th Oct 21 28th Oct 21 11th Nov 21
Anime Day 1st Nov 21 15th Nov 21 29th Nov 21
Lego Day 1st Nov 21 15th Nov 21 29th Nov 21
Happy Holidays! 15th Nov 21 29th Nov 21 13th Dec 21
Retro Day 1st Dec 21 14th Dec 21 28th Dec 21
Book Day 1st Dec 21 14th Dec 21 28th Dec 21

Posted by Ethereal on September 11, 2021 at 12:00 AM UTC.

Well, there were bound to be some teething problems when we first launched - so here's the first list of updates!

  • Email confirmation notices are now automatically resent if an expired link is followed. If this does not happen, visit this page when logged in.
  • Clarification regarding the maximum file size of a profile image has been added to the account details page.
  • Emails will now come from m.givin.gifts as opposed to m.givingifts.org
  • Date formatting has been changed across all pages.
  • Accessible label has been added to "Agree Terms" on the registration page.
  • Profile now converts newlines to line breaks.
  • We have made it clear the wishlist is on a per exchange basis.
  • There is now a list of the exchanges you have signed up for on the account details page.
  • The FAQ has been updated to answer a number of questions asked following the launch.
  • The terms and privacy pages have had many syntax errors corrected.
  • You can now choose to be notified when a new exchange is added to the site.
  • Fixed an error where if text entered into shipping preferences was too long, something would go derp.
  • Fixed an error where a profile would fail to save if a native emoji was used.
If you have any suggestions or find any bugs, please contact us.

Posted by Ethereal on September 10, 2021 at 12:00 AM UTC.

Well, it took us a while to get here - but we're finally live.

After one prototype held together by duct tape, and a second involving hundreds upon hundreds of version control commits... as well as constantly asking our design team for new things, we've managed to do it.

I guess I should start telling you about us. We're Givin Gifts, a team of (currently) 21 people based all over the place. We're a non-profit organisation looking to spread cheer around the world. I think our mission statement sums it up nicely.

"Givin Gifts is a community and organization founded on the belief that spreading gifts and cheer in the world helps to make it a better place for us all. Our mission is not only to enable gift giving on a global scale, but to also encourage philanthropy to various causes. The best gifts are given freely, and so we also strive to make Givin Gifts free to enable the spreading of cheer and charity worldwide."

We were founded by a community of like-minded people after it was announced that Reddit would be sunsetting Reddit Gifts at the end of the year. As an incorporation, we are limited by guarantee, which basically means that we cannot pay those involved a dividend from shares. It means that any money the company makes must go back into the company and the causes that it supports.

Think of this as a sort of soft launch. Whilst we've done extensive testing, we are more than aware that things are sometimes overlooked. If you find something that you think we should know about, let us know. Get in touch if you have any comments or suggestions as well!

As a part of our soft launch, we will not be migrating over any existing data from Reddit Gifts. However, in the coming weeks we will be implementing the ability to verify how many exchanges you have completed previously and update your level accordingly here.

Currently, you'll see that there are two exchanges that you can sign up for, but there will be three more appearing before the end of the month. We decided to do the whole "hype" thing, you know, reveal things slowly over time.

If you'd like, come and have a chat with the team and the members of the community over on our Discord server. You can also follow us on social media, just click on the little icons at the bottom of this page.
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