East-West Digital News
If you would like to be woken up tomorrow morning by a friendly stranger’s call instead of a typical alarm, this application is for you. Social alarm clock Budist.ru enables you to set up the date and time you wish to be awoken, and a volunteer will call you at that exact time. The service is anonymous: “budist” volunteers place a call to the service number whiсh automatically redirects the call to sleepy mobile users.
“Budist” is a play on the word “buddhist,” but has nothing to do with Buddhism. Derived from the Russian verb “budit” or “wake up someone,” the word means “someone who wakes you up.” It has been translated into English as ‘Wakie.’
The service has been deployed across Russia since September 2011, a few months after its inception. Budist.ru claims to have served over 700,000 users to date, with an audience increasing by 10% every week.