About
Kickstarter is an online crowd-funding platform that facilitates grassroots fund-raising campaigns for a wide variety of creative projects, ranging from indie films, music and print publications to journalism, video games and food-related projects.
History
The Kickstarter website launched on April 28th, 2009 as a collaborative project by Perry Chen, Yancey Strickler, and Charles Adler, with Andy Baio serving on the board of directors as its Chief Technology Officer until November 2010. Upon the site’s launch, numerous crowd-funding projects quickly emerged as success stories on the site, which ranges from building a temporary wedding chapel in Manhattan and converting an old bus into a mobile Thai restaurant to sailing around the world and shooting photographs from all 50 states.
News Media Coverage
By August 2009, Kickstarter was covered in an article published by the New York Times, which described the start-up project as "the people’s NEA (National Educational Association). In 2010, TIME Magazine named the site one of the “Best Inventions of 2010” and in the following year, it was listed in the magazine’s “Best Websites of 2011.”
Features
Traffic
Highlights
Search Interest
External References
[1] Kickstarter – Fund & Follow Creativity
[2] Waxy – Kickstarter Launches
[3] New York Times – A Few Dollars at a Time, Patrons Support Artists on the Web
[4]TIME – The 50 Best Inventions of 2010
[5]TIME – The 50 Best Websites of 2011
[6] New York Times – The Trivialities and Transcendence of Kickstarter
[7] Kickstarter – Frequently Asked Questions