Kickstarter announced yesterday that the crowdfunding service has reached a new milestone by launching more than 100,000 projects. Nearly 44 percent of the projects have been successfully funded by a total of $535 million. The top categories for launched projects include Film & Video, Music, Publishing, Art and Games. If its current funding rate continues, the service could raise its first billion as early as sometime this year. Continue reading New Milestone: 100,000 Projects Crowdfunded via Kickstarter

A crowdsourced fundraising campaign to produce a film version of the popular 2004-2007 TV detective show “Veronica Mars” has set a new record for the fastest growing Kickstarter campaign, reaching the $1 million mark in just over four hours. In fact, the entire funding goal of $2 million was achieved in less than 10 hours (at press time, the project’s Kickstarter page listed a total of $3,306,914 from 50,094 backers). Continue reading Veronica Mars Project Sets New Record for Crowdfunding

Bing Now, a new research project demonstrated at Microsoft’s headquarters last week, could give Web searchers a way to gauge the ongoing atmosphere of a bar or restaurant before they decide to visit or make a reservation. Researchers are looking to smartphone owners who are already at the location to provide updated information when checking in. The crowdsourcing tool measures sound with the smartphone’s microphone. Continue reading Bing Now Turns to Live Crowdsourcing for Advanced Search

After the the $99 Android-powered TV game console Ouya attracted more than 63,000 Kickstarter backers last year, many independent game developers are creating games for the device, including mobile developers who want to make the jump to televisions. The system will ship to initial backers on March 28, ahead of the public launch in June, and many developers are preparing to see their games on TVs for the first time. Continue reading New Ouya Game Console Attracts Independent Developers

Sunday’s Super Bowl broadcast featured a compelling use of crowdsourcing. To promote its halftime show, Pepsi incorporated thousands of photos submitted by customers as part of its video introduction welcoming Beyonce to the stage. The promotion serves as another interesting example of the growing crowdsourcing phenomenon, which continues to generate innovative new business and marketing approaches. Continue reading Pepsi Turns to Crowdsourcing for Super Bowl Halftime Video

While Kickstarter has gained much attention for its successful funding of consumer products like the Pebble Watch or the Ouya gaming system, much of its crowdfunding has gone into creation of the arts. “Kings Point,” “Buzkashi Boys” and “Inocente” have become the fourth, fifth and sixth Kickstarter-funded films to earn Academy Award nominations. Continue reading Kickstarter Crowdfunding Leads to Oscar Nominated Films

“Kickstarter has really changed the dynamics at CES,” writes The Verge. “This year, independent developers are getting as much attention as the big companies that usually dominate, and many of them built their products with crowdfunded cash.” Kickstarter gives the small company or the entrepreneur a chance to compete with well-known electronics makers and is leveling a once very one-sided playing field. Continue reading CES 2013: Kickstarter Was Seemingly Everywhere This Year

Kickstarter has helped establish an effective crowdsourcing model for startups, and now Tugg.com has begun to show how filmmakers and exhibitors can benefit from a similar approach. Tugg.com allows people to set up movie screenings where customers pay for reserved tickets, and the screenings only happen after the advanced sales cover expenses. Indie filmmakers are using the online booking site to organize screenings of their projects. Continue reading Crowdsourced Cinema: Tugg.com Borrows a Page from Kickstarter

The following are some notable comments from a panel at this week’s Futures of Entertainment conference at MIT.

Panel: “Creating with the Crowd: Crowdsourcing for Funding, Producing and Circulating Media Content”

• In the pre-production phase, to start a crowd going, you should have fans help you create simple and small ideas. The simple interactions will slowly draw people into the idea. Once they start participating more, then you can move to give them harder tasks — the hardest task/request being funding.
• Having a community financially invested in a film not only produces funds, but can leverage the community’s time and energy after the film has been released to promote.
• One of the keys to successful crowdsourced projects is making sure that if you fail, you need to be able to fail fast.
• When it comes to crowdsourcing, you must find the balance between what you’re asking your crowd to do and what you’re giving them.
• The success of crowdsourcing demands transparency. There should be a mechanism to let the crowd know how their input has been used. The sense of participation feeds the crowd to continue to participate.
• Must provide a simple platform for crowds to engage and use.
• In crowdsourcing there needs to be a person that ultimately decides what goes in to the content. Crowdsourcing isn’t necessarily a democracy, there needs to be a benevolent dictator/editor.
• Crowdsourcing may become a fad if there are too many projects that are too broad. The more Kickstarter projects there are, for example, the harder it is to support them all. People will ultimately select projects that they are intensely interested in.
• Who’s the crowd? When the term “crowd” is used, it’s really just an excuse because you don’t know the audience/group’s identity.
• Right now a vast majority of projects that use the crowd, use it to build funds, or gather ideas. There are very few examples of crowds changing media from the creative aspect.

Speakers:
Mirko Schäfer (Utrecht University, The Netherlands)
Bruno Natal (Queremos, Brazil)
Timo Vuorensola (Wreckamovie, Finland)
Caitlin Boyle (Film Sprout)