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An Open Alternative To Kickstarter
angry tapir writes "Crowd-funding website Crowdtilt officially launched last week, expanding upon the collective fundraising model pioneered by Kickstarter to enable raising money for any project — even a beer blitz. Like Kickstarter, Crowdtilt allows users to create a fundraising campaign with a tipping point. If the effort falls short of the set amount, would-be donors are not charged. However, unlike Kickstarter, the platform allows users to "group fund anything." Users can initiate campaigns without first getting the approval of service administrators, which they must do on Kickstarter."
I'm going to start a fundraising campaign to assassinate every world leader.
In other news: Crowdtilt was just shut down.
Spam ahoy!
Apple has "Mac vs PC", Microsoft has "Laptop Hunters", Linux has recession
That might not be a good idea. It could become overrun by scammers early on. The idealistic "libertarian" approach might work (overtime, scammers will be recognizeable as scammers by donors more easily) but by that time the site might be discredited as a haven for scammers by the majority of would-be donors
Oh who am I trying to kid, it'll just take some beer, and the high school kids will supply the money for that.
I wouldn't worry so much about spam, but rather about frivolous projects.
To see what other models are like, go check out...
http://www.indiegogo.com/
http://rockethub.com/
http://www.pozible.com/
http://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/
http://invested.in/
http://fundry.com/
http://pledgie.com/
http://www.sponsume.com/
http://peerbackers.com/
Then after you're doing reading through the hundreds of projects that amount to little more than "give me money because... well, just because.", you'll probably be glad that KickStarter does some, albeit a very superficial, checking of projects.
Yes, KickStarter has its own problem projects that make it through the review process.. projektor (probably a scam), juicies (unrealistic funding vs rewards leading to a kid way in over his head), Googly Eyes (essentially selling an existing product for a premium).
But they do try, and they explicitly disallow 'good cause' type projects, which are often the "just give me money" type projects.
Nothing against 'good cause' projects when they really are for a good cause - people who need a prosthesis but can't afford one.. more power to then. But then there's the "I want to go on a trip to Europe"-types.
I'd be more afraid of that sort of thing hitting crowdtilt, than spam hitting it.
Also, for those who want a truly open alternative, set up a Wordpress site and go check out:
http://ignitiondeck.com/id/wordpress-crowdfunding/
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/crowd-funding/
As a non-American the thing that really annoys me about kickstarter is that its only for projects in the US. Does anyone know if this one will be any different?
How long before this gets used as an assassination market? Probably by using Craigslist style euphamisms (like "flower donations").
Kickstopper is what we really need. Thwart some bad ideas.
They're probably still bitter that Kickstarter didn't fund that arcade cabinet for Occupy Oakland. I won't give it too much time. Kickstarter is Kickstarter because it doesn't allow any Joe Schmoe with an idea to ask for money. You need a clear business plan. Your idea actually needs to have a chance to make money. If you don't make it on Kickstarter, that's a sign that your idea probably isn't good. Maybe this site will be good for the crazy ideas who have equally crazy backers. Only need a few people donating a lot of money on a crazy idea.
I wish they'd improve on the way Kickstarter organizes the projects. I tried one a year ago and after two days my linked web site hadn't received a single hit. I wanted to wait a couple of days as an experiment to see what traffic Kickstarter itself generated before I started driving traffic myself. I checked the Kickstarter web site and I couldn't find my own project. I finally found it buried half a dozen pages deep in this generic new projects section and no where else. Basically it took some real digging to find it. The site is organized like iTunes. The favored projects get fronted and everything is buried with no hope of getting funded. I found it annoying since all they were contributing was hosting for their cut and if anything they were working against the vast majority of projects so they could focus funding sources for favored ones. After two days I halted the project and never tried again. The point is unless you personally can drive enough traffic to your project it has no chance and 90% of more of the projects posted are never given a fair chance. All they are providing you with is the structure and nothing else. I thought the site was there to promote projects but it's not it's there to promote projects that they think have a chance of getting funded or that the people behind the site like. There seemed no rhyme or reason behind the selections because most were obviously popular but some never received any pledges yet they were deemed worthy of a named section. If a section says film or books it should contain ALL of the film or book projects not just the darling projects. Most won't bother to look past the named sections because they would assume that's all there is and why wouldn't they?
It's a good idea but like all things in life the insiders get the breaks and the deck is stacked against everyone else. Maybe this new site will do a better job and not become a source for the "in crowd" like Kickstarter turned into.
Greetings, friend. Do you wish to look as happy as me? Well, you've got the power inside you right now. So use it. And send one dollar to Happy Dude, 742 Evergreen Terrace, Springfield. Don't delay! Eternal happiness is just a dollar away. http://ctilt.it/kfab Because somebody had to.
The idea behind this is that Kickstarter's editorial oversight is preventing good projects from being listed. Are they? What are the canonical examples of good projects being rejected?
That's an odd definition of the word. I'll start referring to it as "open" when the rest of the world gets to participate.
Sorry, that's just a bad idea.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2011/5/23/
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Hey guys - glad to see our site's launch made it on here!
It was also awesome to see IDG pick up our TechCrunch story/ and press release, but the title of the article is pretty misleading (as well as the first few paragraphs). All press is good press for a young startup (gives us a LOT of feedback early on as we continue to build out our site/service), however the story seems to imply that this is for Kickstarter type projects... The language, both in our press release and our site, is actually explicitly different from Kickstarter's.
So just to clarify a few things for those that have asked questions: :"Users can initiate campaigns without first getting the approval of service administrators, which they must do on Kickstarter." -- Users can start campaigns without a wall set up by us, but we do look over campaigns, and use a few other Y-Combinator backed companies for fraud prevention and identification upon starting a campaign and disbursement of funds (as well as the several measures taken by our secure payment processor PoundPay).
-Crowdtilt is more of a "Kickstarter for groups of friends" (where instead of a $30,000 project, your group of friends funds a $1,200 party bus or bachelor party or wedding gift).
-It is for pooling money together, where instead of crowdfunding (many-to-one funding), it is more of a genre we call groupfunding (funded by the group, for the group)... I actually posted why we stuck with the name Crowdtilt over the other domain we own Grouptilt on Quora if anyone is interested.
-The author made a bit of a misleading statement, where he said
-The campaigns that use it for grandiose individual fundraising haven't done so well in our testing (it's not very likely for people on the internet to just fund an objective without having a clear connection to it).
Any other questions, feel free to check our FAQs or reach out to us using our Live Chat or help client. Hope this answers a few.
Thanks for posting the link to us!! Pretty huge day for something we've created (with tender, loving care) to make it on Slashdot!!
James // Khaled
crowdtilt
I believe you smoked too much crack. Does that answer your question?
https://www.crowdtilt.com/campaigns/help-me-document-meeting-my-son Lets see. If it actually goes through I'm going to have to go through with it, but it'll be something nice I can leave for him.
Wanna kick ass on RIAA? Set up a kick starter for legal battles or political lobbying,
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Apart from not requiring any site admin attention before your funding effort goes live?
I can see why it looks like a lot of "Open" projects though; blatant copy of something already done successfully. But to be fair, some homeless guy with a cardboard sign saying "To be honest, I just need a beer" did it first.
They have no fees. They aren't tied down to Amazon payments. It looks like you can host projects from anywhere.
It sounds great honestly. The biggest problem is that Kickstarter is already so embedded as the dominant site in crowdfunding, it may be hard for Crowdtilt to get traction.
That explains it.
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
www.thepoint.com was a site for groups of people to organize and donate money, or make political statements. The people that made thepoint went to a more focused vision, and that site became www.groupon.com.
Separately, some people saw thepoint, and ripped off the idea to make www.kickstarter.com.
Ironically, now www.kickstarter.com is being ripped off by this new site, to make basically the original site that this all came from.
The internet has come full circle.
"Who can use Crowdtilt?
Anybody in the United States!"
Insensitive clods...
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
What should I do to make it happen?. Fund is always interesting...^_^ Celebs Hairstyles
Hello, we are Russian mob... er investors, and are looking for way to laund... er raise money for many good cause, like helping Romanian prostitutes trying to get into film business and young Latvian programmers looking for equipment to write revolutionary new bank software. This seems like good solution to our crim... er investment endeavors.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
KickStarter is mostly 'dominant' in terms of people's awareness - a few high profile projects there didn't hurt (especially the last few days, of course), and they know how to work the media.
But it certainly doesn't have a monopoly, and Crowdtilt appears to target a fairly different sort of project (campaign). Even if it may never dethrone KickStarter (372 new projects over 3 random days), it may just find its own niche and instead nibble away at some of the other sites out there, such as IndieGoGo (164 new projects over the same 3 random days), with which they have much greater overlap.
Just had to post it.
When is someone going to address the market outside the USA? Sure, anyone can contribute, but it requires an American to receive the funds.
Just started my own (legit) project, to bring wheelchair accessible ATVs to Burning Man.
https://www.crowdtilt.com/campaigns/burning-man-bring-wheelchair-accessible-atvs-to-the-playa
Easier & faster to set up the project here than on KickStarter.
No contributions yet, but we will see what the level of interest is.
Good idea, let's not spoil it shall we?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
Riding a motorbike downhill, in gear and then let the clutch out...
Of course these days most come with electric start...
I think John Young from Cryptome nominated someone or was nominated for the Chrysler Award for an anonymous assassination pool where people would bet on the day an assassination would happen, presumably because they are the killer. Then they win the pool. Cryptoanarchy bitcoiny like idea y'know?
And fund it using crowdtilt!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Sounds like it's even easier to set up scams now.
Nuff said.
Is this one available for non-US citizens? ( because Kickstarter isn't :( )
Both sites have a critical lack of "Fund my Boob Job" projects.
... they used Kickstarter to fund their new site?
I have no sig yet I must scream.
If a closed group maintains control of the data, it controls the platform's use and represents a takeover target by interests inimical to the purpose of the platform.
Seastead this.