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Diaspora breaks $100k and all of Kickstarter's records

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Re: Diaspora breaks $100k and all of Kickstarter's records

#91

Post by jacquesm »

nirai wrote: post #84
jacquesm wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, absolutely. They initially asked for $10K. They now have 10 times as much. To pause the contribution round now and to show they can deliver would help them in avoiding the enormous risk of as someone else here already mentioned of becoming 'the next cuil'. Hype is a double-edged sword, it's great when you have it but you only get one shot at delivering and in an overhyped situation that is much harder than in on…

By your logic, a person winning the lottery should cap at 100K and say no thanks, I rather not piss of my friends family and colleges. Most likely the public interest in this project will die out within 1-3 months. Hopefully they will not ruin their future lives endlessly trying to reproduce this incredibly lucky strike. But while their at it, they should get as MUCH as they possibly can and totally and shamelessly g…

If they're smart they put the money in a foundation that can only be used for the project in a constructive way.

If they go getting drunk at parties on the other side of the globe there is a chance they'll kill kickstarter as collateral damage besides their own project.

Taking in funding - even if it is 'throw-away' cash - comes with a responsibility, this is not a 'lottery', and the crowd is not anonymous.

Re: Diaspora breaks $100k and all of Kickstarter's records

#92

Post by rick_2047 »

jacquesm wrote: post #60
hyperbovine wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and one-punch KO Facebook Wha? A bunch of geeks living in the echo chamber are pissed about a privacy issue, so they all cruise over to a geeky website, and toss in $20 of their geek-inflated disposable income, to a vaporware project whose popularity is mostly due to politics. Meanwhile, in the time it took me to write this, ten million people logged in to Facebook. Methinks a little perspective is in order here.

Exactly. All this amounts to at this stage is a signal to facebook. A powerful signal, absolutely. But not by any stretch of the imagination a threat. If they deliver somewhere in the fall and if it starts to draw significant traffic and if they don't have a big security breach themselves, and if there is no falling out between the four founders then they might be a contender. But that's a lot of ifs.

I was just wondering is the 100k worth the powerful signal.

Re: Diaspora breaks $100k and all of Kickstarter's records

#94

Post by jacquesm »

rick_2047 wrote: post #92
jacquesm wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. All this amounts to at this stage is a signal to facebook. A powerful signal, absolutely. But not by any stretch of the imagination a threat. If they deliver somewhere in the fall and if it starts to draw significant traffic and if they don't have a big security breach themselves, and if there is no falling out between the four founders then they might be a contender. But that's a lot of ifs.

I was just wondering is the 100k worth the powerful signal.

> I was just wondering is the 100k worth the powerful signal.

Don't you mean the opposite?

Re: Diaspora breaks $100k and all of Kickstarter's records

#95

Post by rick_2047 »

jacquesm wrote: post #94
rick_2047 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just wondering is the 100k worth the powerful signal.

> I was just wondering is the 100k worth the powerful signal. Don't you mean the opposite?

No I don't. Not many people care about there privacy (otherwise facebook would have been bust). And even if they had pledged 200% or 300% that would have been enough to send a strong signal but 1088% of pledging is just not right.

There could have been so much more done with the other 80k. So many other things need money.

Re: Diaspora breaks $100k and all of Kickstarter's records

#96

Post by ghshephard »

jacquesm wrote: post #18
thaumaturgy wrote: post #12

Rats -- someone here said, "I'd be worried if I was kickstarter at this point...", and as I went to reply to that, they deleted their comment. But it's spot-on. Short term, this is going to bring a lot of publicity and attention towards kickstarter, and that will also benefit the projects on there. If you'd like to launch something via kickstarter, now is the time to do it . Because, odds are, what these guys roll ou…

It isn't over until the fat lady sings. But if I were them I'd shut down the pledge site now, thank everyone and say that if after the launch they feel they need more funding they'll do a second round.

This is a once-in-a-lifetime no repeatable event. And the money is really not that significant in the whole scheme of things for four people over a summer. Now, if they could get it to go over $400k, then it would be substantial.

Re: Diaspora breaks $100k and all of Kickstarter's records

#97

Post by neurotech1 »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #12

Rats -- someone here said, "I'd be worried if I was kickstarter at this point...", and as I went to reply to that, they deleted their comment. But it's spot-on. Short term, this is going to bring a lot of publicity and attention towards kickstarter, and that will also benefit the projects on there. If you'd like to launch something via kickstarter, now is the time to do it . Because, odds are, what these guys roll ou…

Maybe Kickstarter need to introduce "milestone" payments. This concept is used for freelancer.com and similar website.

eg. If the total is over $5,000 then the first $5k is cleared as normal, and any additional funds are delivered on meeting a milestone.

Re: Diaspora breaks $100k and all of Kickstarter's records

#98

Post by anigbrowl »

jacquesm wrote: post #35
mrduncan wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There really isn't any motivation to shut it down now though as far as I can tell. It seems like they're getting money with essentially no strings attached - might as well get it now while it's easy to get.

That's true. But they would come over a lot more credible (at least to me, that may be different for others). I you've misjudged your initial funding requirement by more than 10:1 you are already showing that you've done something wrong, so since they've received what they said they needed the logical next step would be to put up some proof they can deliver. Like that expectations stay within the realm of the feasibl…

But Jacques, they haven't misjudged their original funding requirement - at worst, they've underestimated potential early investor/market interest in the product they are proposing to create.

I do see two problems here.

1. Diaspora is now awash in money - which might go to their heads or not, but which in any case creates new, non-code responsibilities for them. $100k is not chump change, and you can't just stick it into a petty cash box. As soon as Kickstarter transfers it to a bank account, being greater than $10k it will trigger an automatic report from the bank to the IRS. So before they write any more code, the Diaspora team need to hire a lawyer and create a trust or some other appropriate legal vehicle...might I suggest our own grellas?

2. For Kickstarter, this raises questions of how funding is managed. Now, most things on there offer a straight trade - send me $1 and I'll send you an mp3 of my new song after I've bought the guitar I need, or whatever. It's a sales contract, basically. However, it's not obvious what the terms of this contract are - for example, their FAQ doesn't address the question of what happens if the project owner doesn't buy the guitar but flees to Lichtenstein instead. I'm guessing recourse and other issues are governed by the terms of the Amazon payments agreement (https://payments.amazon.com/sdui/sdui/about?nodeId=6019), but Kickstarter need to address this upfront to avoid potential heartache, especially given that they allow projects to solicit commitments of up to $10k. Sooner or later some project will fail in such a way that a donor feels victimized and there will be blowback for Kickstarter. Given the large amount of money involved here, it would be a good idea for them to clarify the legal context in which donations take place. I find it surprising that they don't have any stated policy about donations exceeding the requested amount - though given the usual difficulty faced by artists begging for money, they probably haven't had to confront it seriously before. Most projects that overshoot their target do so by a fraction, not multiples.

Incidentally, Kickstarter's own rules do not allow a project creator to halt the project early, so even if Diaspora want to shut off the flow of donations, they can't.

Disclosure: I kicked them some $ too.

Re: Diaspora breaks $100k and all of Kickstarter's records

#99

Post by jacquesm »

rick_2047 wrote: post #95
jacquesm wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was just wondering is the 100k worth the powerful signal. Don't you mean the opposite?

No I don't. Not many people care about there privacy (otherwise facebook would have been bust). And even if they had pledged 200% or 300% that would have been enough to send a strong signal but 1088% of pledging is just not right. There could have been so much more done with the other 80k. So many other things need money.

Ah, I get you now, sorry.

I don't know if it is not 'right', the signal function would have been just as strong if they would have set their original goal at $100K and people would have sent them that much $.

In some ways the $amount is a value that collapses a number of underlying elements to a single number, the amount of frustration around facebook privacy, the people that simply wish these kids luck and there are a number of people that hate facebook enough to put up a substantial amount of $.

Which portion of that $100K ($109K already, $4500 per hour right now) comes from the 'signal' portion is hard to tell.

Re: Diaspora breaks $100k and all of Kickstarter's records

#100

Post by jacquesm »

ghshephard wrote: post #96
jacquesm wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't over until the fat lady sings. But if I were them I'd shut down the pledge site now, thank everyone and say that if after the launch they feel they need more funding they'll do a second round.

This is a once-in-a-lifetime no repeatable event. And the money is really not that significant in the whole scheme of things for four people over a summer. Now, if they could get it to go over $400k, then it would be substantial.

At the current rate they're pulling in money they are less than 8 days away from $400K, if they get more mainstream press it might happen quicker than that.

If the media hype dies down it will probably freeze fairly quickly, but the media is loving this story so far.

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