Combing the Crowd for Funds

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A year ago my favorite web property was Foursquare, this year it's Kickstarter. What is Kickstarter? Well in its own words...
Kickstarter is a funding platform for creative projects. Everything from films, games, and music to art, design, and technology. Kickstarter is full of ambitious, innovative, and imaginative projects that are brought to life through the direct support of others.
Basically if you have a passion project, and don't have the capitol, Kickstarter gives you the platform to crowd-source the dough. Recently Bridget Gongol, the sister of one of my best friends, used the site to raise funds for her children's book shown above. Like most of the projects on Kickstarter, she only needed a small amount of money to get her project off the ground.


Bridget's book is quite fun and very colorful, I highly recommend you pick up a copy of "Crocodile Life is Hard ...and Other Observations" and follow her blog for regular updates before she becomes super famous.

Why is Kickstarter my web property of the year? So many films and tech projects have popped onto my radar thanks to this site (Example A, Example B, Example C). Obviously you can't give to each fundraising run but the idea that thousands of people out there are helping complete strangers bring their projects to reality, that is awesome. I love services like this that put the power of the market into the hands of the content/gadget/service creators. Etsy, Adsense, Blogs, Kiva etc. these services allow creatives to leverage the internet and maybe break the drone lifestyle of working for "the man."

Sure, there are alternatives to Kickstarter, but when a service provides an attractive, reputable and well known platform I am willing to endorse it (think my love for Youtube). In fact, any time a project pops up that I think fits the Kickstarter mold, I suggest the crowd-source fundraising website. Now if only I could write a book, invent a cool gadget or script a cool film maybe I could put the power of Kickstarter to good use.

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