The World2one World Platform is a new model for advertising and communications between businesses and customers. It's designed to enable all businesses (national and local) to use an advertising model that creates relationships with all interested customers, rather than just impressions. It accomplishes this by protecting the privacy and anonymity of the interested customer. This removes the principal barrier for creating business/customer relationships—the unwillingness of prospective customers to surrender personal information about themselves (which is understandable) or dislike in having it harvested by tracking technologies. The World Platform changes this old model in that it provides a means for businesses to communicate directly to interested yet anonymous customers.

The initial goal is to transform how advertising is done in the world (we have bigger plans once we get that done).

We believe that there is a great business model in protecting an individual's privacy and anonymity with respect to advertisers, businesses and organizations—while permitting that individual to connect to and communicate with those advertisers, businesses and organizations. In establishing this new advertising model, we'll transform advertising from something that simply makes impressions into something that makes relationships—between advertisers and individuals.

All advertising appears to have as a goal: Making a favorable impression on a customer or potential customer so that when the customer eventually needs the product or service the merchant offers, the customer will then remember the advertising and engage the merchant. The problem with this model for advertising is that when a merchant pays for the advertising they never know if it is going to work. They never know if they've made a favorable impression on the customer. They never know if when a customer does actually engage in a transaction with the merchant whether it was because of the advertising or some other reason.

The World Platform removes all of those problems. Instead of only creating an impression on the customer through the advertising, the World Platform enables the merchant to create a relationship with the customer. And, the merchant will only pay us when the advertising they create is successful.

Because of the World Platform's underlying software, our mobile apps, and standard GPS services, we know exactly when a customer uses an offer or discount that a merchant has made available when the customer is at the merchant's business (even though the customer remains totally anonymous to World2one and the merchant). For example, when the customer uses an offer created by the merchant by using our mobile app when they are at the merchant's business, our software identifies that transaction and the merchant will then pay a flat fee to World2one for that transaction (a "transaction fee"). This is similar to the standard click through fees that web advertisers have been using for years. But unlike typical click throughs where a merchant has to pay when the customer comes to their website even if the customer ultimately decides not to purchase anything from the merchant's website, the World2one transaction fee is only charged to the merchant when a customer is at the merchant's physical location and engages in a purchase with the merchant. If the customer tries to use a merchant's offer then they are not physically at the merchant's business (GPS identifies whether the customer is there) the customer will be told they cannot use the offer since they are not physically at the merchant's business then the merchant pays nothing. That's paying for advertising only upon success.

Of course a merchant will know who a customer is if they show up at the merchant's business and uses a credit card to pay, or tells the merchant their name, or something like that. In those cases, no software or technology on the planet can protect a customer's anonymity. We're only talking about anonymity in the sense that World2one doesn't secretly gather information on the customer (through making the customer fill out some registration form when they sign up, track their surfing around the web, or follow them around through their mobile phone) and then share that information with anyone, such as merchants or marketers.

With most Daily Deal sites and companies, such companies tell the merchants that they will have to agree to offer 50% off to the Daily Deal Company's email subscribers before the Daily Deal Company will promote the business to their email list. Customers who use the "Deal" pay then Daily Deal Company for the "Deal" (50% of the retail price) then the Daily Deal Company takes their cut (typically 50% of what the customer paid to them) and finally after a period of time the Daily Deal Company sends the merchant their cut (typically 25% of the merchant's retail price for the product or service). And to top it off, many of these customers never come back to the merchant—because the customers were just "Deal" hunters and the Daily Deal Company doesn't provide the merchant with any tools to enable those customers to become repeat customers. Of course if the merchant is willing to run another of these great "Deals" with the Daily Deal Company, the merchant might get some of these customers to come back in and take advantage of another great "Deal," but that's probably a bad "Deal" for the merchant.

With the World Platform, customers see the offers provided by merchants that they like—ones that they've invited into their anonymous My World account, or they can discover new merchants through the "Nearby" feature in the mobile app. The merchant pays only a small monthly fee to use the World Platform tools to create and promote their offers, and then as discussed earlier will only pay a transaction fee for every offer a customer uses when they are physically at the merchant's business. World2one doesn't dictate what the offers look like that the merchant creates. The customer pays the merchant when they use the offer not World2one. So the merchant is in control of what they want to offer their product or service, when they want to offer it and how many customers it will be available to.

As we mentioned above, the merchant is in control of what they want to offer their product or service, when they want to offer it and how many customers it will be available to. Through the merchant's World2one Platform account, the merchant can create any number of offers they want to display within the World Platform to interested customers. For example, let's assume you are a restaurant and Tuesday evenings are typically slow. You could create an offer (it takes about 30 seconds—and we have video tutorials to help you do that the first time) that might provide the following: On Tuesday, May 20 between 4:00 pm and 7:30 pm, you can save $5.00 when you spend $30.00 (a 20% savings), but only if you are one of the first 15 customers to use this offer through the World2one mobile app. So you see, you get to control every aspect of your offer and advertising.

It's really simple. You can go to the how it works tab in our menu to see how easy it is to get started—creating your business profile and your offers. It takes the typical merchant a few minutes to create their business profile (which they can edit as often as they wish). The World Platform then lays all of that information out into a sleek display. Then the merchant can create their offer or offers. Each takes less than a minute to create. And we have short video tutorials to help you through the steps your first time or two.

The merchant pays only a small monthly fee to use the World Platform tools to create and promote offers, and then as discussed earlier will only pay a transaction fee for every offer a customer uses when they are physically at the merchant's business.

Nope. There is a contract, but it is just month to month. If you aren't satisfied with things for any reason, you simply cancel. Our job is to help you get discovered by lots of customers in your area and then help you bring them back over and over again. If that isn't happening for you, then you should cancel.

It's simple. The individual just chooses a username and password and you'll be registered. They will then be able to view their own World that is populated with businesses or organizations they've invited "in" where those businesses can show the individual their best offers or other information—all while the individual stays anonymous. And since we don't require any personal information from the individual such as an email address, they're anonymous to us also.

We are currently launching the World Platform through partnerships with media companies (local television, radio and newspapers) in various communities. These media "sponsors" are bringing together local businesses and promoting it in their communities through their media services. Since we want to ensure that folks who sign up to create their own World have a great experience from the beginning, a media sponsor is not permitted to launch the World Platform in their community unless dozens and dozens of merchants are participating in that community. Creating your own World wouldn't be very useful if there were only one or two participating merchants in your community. So only those folks who reside in communities where we've established a critical base of participating merchants will be able to sign up for an account. If we haven't established a media partner in your community along with a critical base of merchants we'll just have to ask you to be patient.

We will only launch once we have a "sponsor" in the local community and a certain number of businesses in that community signed up and ready to provide their best offers to that community. The reason for this is that we want users to have the best experience possible from the first moment that they sign up to create their own World. So, there needs to be significant choice among businesses in a community.

While we are currently launching in communities through local media partners, we have begun opening up our distribution model to well-connected organizations and individuals in local communities who are not local television, radio or newspaper companies. The partner revenue program that we've developed makes it appealing to any well-connected organizations and individuals to consider launching the World platform in their community. If you are interested in inquiring (if we don't already have a sponsor in your community) you can email us at sales@world2one.com

We do indeed, and it's pretty cool. You can get it at the Apple Store or Google Play.

It's pretty simple. When you sign in on the app (your username and password—since we still want you be remain anonymous) you'll see an icon that says My World. When you click on that, you'll see all the businesses you've invited into your World to show you their best offers. The app will also show you how far these businesses are from your current location (you'll need to have your GPS/location services turned on for that to occur). There is also another icon that says Nearby. When you click on this icon and choose a particular category (Food and Drink for example) you'll see the businesses that are in the World2one ecosystem within that category in order of distance from your current location. So, even if you haven't invited some businesses into your World, you can still find them and their best offers and use them.

Using offers in the mobile app is different from using them from the browser version of your World (where you print your coupon when you want to use an offer). In the mobile app, when you click Use This Offer it will locate you at that business (you'll need to have your GPS/location services turned on for that to occur) and once it finds you, it will then let you use the offer and tells you that you can show it to the merchant. If you aren't yet at that location when you click the Use This Offer button, you'll see a message that says the mobile app can't locate you at that business, so once you arrive at the location you can then try again. This helps the merchant know that only customers that show up at their business can use their offers through the mobile app (this is especially important if the merchant has placed a limitation on the number of offers available, so that folks who actually show up are the only ones who can claim those offers).

Just as shared with users who want to sign up for their own World, we are currently launching the World Platform through partnerships with media companies (local television, radio and newspapers) in various communities. These media "sponsors" are bringing together local businesses and promoting it in their communities through their media services. Since we want to ensure that folks who sign up to create their own World have a great experience from the beginning, a media sponsor is not permitted to launch the World Platform in their community unless dozens and dozens of merchants are participating in that community. Of course, if you are a merchant in a community where we don't yet have a media sponsor, and you have significant contacts within your merchant community that you feel you could bring together to launch your community's My World, then contact us and we'd be interested in talking about possibilities.

Let's face it; we've all thought at times that QR Codes were pretty lame. If I just wanted to go to a company's website and see some promotional stuff, I'd simply type in their web address and go there. Most folks just don't see enough value in seeing promotional stuff to go through the process of scanning QR Codes. That's why we've integrated QR Codes into the World Platform. Now if you scan the QR Code of a merchant that is in the World2one ecosystem that merchant gets automatically added into your World. Now you can see all of the best offers that the merchant wants to communicate with its customers while you remain totally anonymous. By using the QR Codes displays in their business (which every merchant who signs up with us receives), this is a great way for merchants to seamlessly communicate with all the folks who come into or pass by their businesses—without requiring any personal information from these folks (such as an email address). We think everyone wins in this.