THE NEWS WRAP: Reddit to give more than $82,000 to charity

Reddit is asking its users to vote on which 10 charities should receive 10% of the startup’s advertising revenue for 2014.

Ten charities chosen by the Reddit community will each receive $82,765.95.

Ryan Merket, product manager at Reddit, said in a statement one of the things that helps everyone in the company get “out of bed every morning” is the knowledge they are helping people around the world.

“For 2014 we decided to ‘decimate’ our ad revenues to support the goals and causes of the entire community,” he says.

“That means for every $10 in ad revenue we received, we would be splitting $1 equally between 10 charities selected by our community. We closed the books on 2014 and our total revenue was $8,276,594.93. Meaning we are donating $827,659.49.”

Indiegogo testing ways to refund money

Crowdfunding platform Indiegogo is working on a way for its users to receive a full refund should a project they give money to not go ahead.

TechCrunch reports the option is called Per Insurance and costs between 10-20% of the pledge amount.

The coverage is currently available for three projects and refunds a customer the full amount of their pledge – minus their insurance – should their perks not be delivered within the estimated timeframe.

Uber expands funding by $1 billion

Popular ride-sharing service Uber has expanded its Series E round by $US1 billion to $US2.8 billion.

The New York Times reports the additional strategic investment was led in part by Chinese internet giant Baidu.

Uber is currently valued at around $US40 billion.

Overnight

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is down 0.19%, rising 33.62 points to 18,013.96. The Australian dollar is currently trading at 78.24 US cents.

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