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 out just isn't going to live up to the $100,000+ raised for it, and when that happens, that's going to reflect badly on kickstarter. I would guess that potential donors will be far more critical of future kickstarter projects; the foremost question on those projects is going to be, "Is this another Diaspora?"
The funding for this thing stopped being about getting this project off the ground, and has started being about a protest against Facebook. There's more than enough money in there to launch Diaspora now. People are donating now just to moon Facebook, and that's gonna end up hurting kickstarter later.
Sorry, that was me. I thought a little bit more about it and decided that I was mostly wrong.
The people who donate money on Kickstarter aren't donating with the expectation of a real return. In a sense, they're "voting with their wallet". I don't think people give Diaspora $20 bucks thinking "hey, this is going to be a Facebook killer!", I think they will donate with the idea that they'd like to see someone give it a go.
Sorry for being so bipolar about it; I figured I'd delete the comment before having to defend a position I no longer agreed with.
Making a comment, deleting it, and then replying to a comment that agreed with it stating that what they are agreeing with you upon is wrong is an interesting way of creating an argument.
And now everyone will know my secret shame of not being able to make up my mind.
I still don't think it's great for Kickstarter, but I don't think it's as big an issue as I initially did. I was hoping nobody had seen my comment, but they did; and I wanted to explain the reason I deleted my comment.
I don't think it's a shame at all. You should take pride that you're trying to construct well-reasoned arguments, and in the course of that, sometimes you change your mind. Only cranks and trolls never have that experience.
That's why it would be great to have a 'preview' button the initial form is pretty small to work in and it is very easy to miss something before clicking 'reply'.
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.
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 feasible.
On another note, this funding round is feeding off the facebook name recognition, not on the track record of these people.
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.
as to 1) Yes, agreed fully, a trust is the way to go. Grellas would be awesome.
2) Kickstarter will likely learn as much from this particular event as anybody (including the diaspora team), they have seen their model validated in a way that you can only dream of when you run a service like that with a ton of free publicity to boot. If diaspora is only marginally successful that would be enough, but they should be careful to show their independence from the project.
I'm going to watch this very closely in the next couple of months, it is imo the biggest story in the year to date with respect to start-up financing.
I sincerely wish those kids the best of luck, they'll need it. Their biggest problems will be that they will be sitting on a significant sum of money and that alone will attract all kinds of sharks, which is not good when you're a goldfish.
I've suggested they apply to YC, that's one of the ways in which they could get the expertise they need in order to at least make it to a launch of sorts. They'll be in dire need of people they can trust.
It seems to me that their FAQ tries to get around the question of what happens if a project isn't completed. Specifically, it says the project manager is "expected" to cancel funding. Otherwise, it might lead to "damage to your reputation" or even "legal action on behalf of your backers."
However, I bet that "canceling funding" may not even be possible. Most founders will transfer the money from Amazon to their bank account. Even then, a project's viability may not even be obvious for another year so I doubt chargebacks could occur.
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 one where expectations are still realistic. The more money they pull in the more this will be overhyped, the bigger the chance of a public disappointment when they launch.
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 go for it, hacking, hiring other people to work with them, getting drunk in parties at the other side of the globe, whatever...
Giving that money back saying they are afraid to disappoint some anonymous crowd would be totally nuts.
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.
It's not about personal morality, but legal responsibility. For example, just what are their tax and commercial obligations right now? You can't just hand the IRS a copy of the GPL; a large sum of money like this will require them to spend some time and $ just to document and report it correctly so it doesn't get treated like a scam.
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.
Because of the context, I parsed that as "if I were [Kickstarter] I'd shut down the pledge site now", and was having a hard time following your reasoning. Assuming you meant Diaspora, your point is a lot more reasonable.
hmm but the question is if they can shut it down while still keeping the money. maybe with this money they can expand their team and develop faster and better.
I disagree. For Kickstarter, I think this is what the "Paris Hilton cell phone hack" was for Digg. It has proved their model and their platform and will mainstream their service. Only good things for them - I actually think Kickstarter is the big winner in this entire situation, Diaspora is now saddled with sadly unreasonable expectations.
I'm not clear on how this will damage Kickstarter's reputation. They're only hosting the project's donation collection system.
They could have put up a simple webpage with a "Donate Now" button linking to Paypal to collect funds. Would that have made Paypal look bad? Or their web hosts's reputation?
As for "Is this going to be another Diaspora," I'm not sure I would totally connect the Diaspora project to Kickstarter - unless it was Kickstarter writing the software that wasn't delivered (in the worst case scenario).
For many people this will be their first exposure to kickstarter. First experience a negative one for a now very high profile project might damage the kickstarter brand.
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 out just isn't going to live up to the $100,000+ raised for it, and when that happens, that's going to reflect badly on kickstarter. I would guess that potential donors will be far more critical of future kickstarter projects; the foremost question on those projects is going to be, "Is this another Diaspora?"
The funding for this thing stopped being about getting this project off the ground, and has started being about a protest against Facebook. There's more than enough money in there to launch Diaspora now. People are donating now just to moon Facebook, and that's gonna end up hurting kickstarter later.