We will Focus on the top 5 crowdfunding News items for the Day:
1) Students turn to Crowd-Funding for Facebook privacy case, raise €20,000
http://www.zdnet.com/students-turn-to-crowd-funding-for-facebook-privacy-court-case-raise-20000-7000008551/
The Austrian student group Europe-v-Facebook wants to go to court to force Facebook to do more to protect the data privacy of its users. To finance the legal battle, the group is turning to crowdfunding.
Europe-v-Facebook is now preparing for court, and estimates that the cost of the case might range between €100,000 and €300,000.
With no access to legal aid, the group is hoping to finance its battle using contributions from supporters online.
The group has set up a crowd-funding appeal at
Crowd4Privacy, where users can choose to donate any amount they see fit. "People are donating an average of €20...... @ 5,000 supporters, they can bring the most important issues to court......
...@ 15,000 supporters, they can use everything we have.
A verdict would be a signal for the online industry, similar to the
antitrust proceedings against Microsoft,"
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2) Everyone chip in, please: Crowdfunding Sandy
http://www.scpr.org/news/2012/12/10/35189/everyone-chip-in-please-crowdfunding-sandy/
The generosity of Big-hearted Americans who always rush to give money after a disaster is using new methods? …...and Just how much and how fast funding is often determined by technology.
Hurricane Sandy has shown crowdfunding websites are a simple tool for quick-response giving. Anyone can go on these sites and ask for money to rebuild or to help their neighbors rebuild. Friends, family and strangers chip in.
You can sign up and establish a Donation based campaign, share it with your contacts/friends, etc. on Facebook, Twitter, email, and begin accepting credit or debit card donations online.
This is what 32-year-old writer Jenny Adams did. It was simple: she added a gripping picture of a flooded street to
her page, and asked for money that she could give out to her neighbors affected by Sandy in the Alphabet City neighborhood of Manhattan.
Adams bought bundles of jackets, blankets and food at Kmart and Target, and offered them to neighbors in need.
She also handed out a lot of money. She gave $500 to a friend who owns a damaged bar. A $200 gift card went to the checkout lady at Kmart for her sister in N.J. And Adams recently offered a $1,000 check to the damaged Lower East Side Girls Club.
The Red Cross is embracing crowdfunding with Sandy-like campaigns of its own on two different websites,
IndieGoGo and
CrowdRise. Each site is pulling in more than $1 million, which is a pittance compared to the $170 million in total donations to the charitybut, the organization says it will have more than half of it left for long-term Sandy rebuilding.
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3) How To Make A Kickass Kickstarter Video
http://www.fastcompany.com/3003858/how-make-kickass-kickstarter-video
KickStarter, Indiegogo and numerous other Donation & Pre-Order based CrowdFunding sites are great places to fund your independent project and in all cases, as compelling, entertaining and informative video “Sales Pitch” in a key part of the cCampaign and its funding success.
Nathaniel Hansen is an independent filmmaker from Boston who has been a part of dozens of successful campaigns, has a forthcoming book about crowdfunding on the way and shares a number of Valuable Video characteristics for the Campaign video:
Be Genuine - campaigns are often successful due to the emotional connection potential backers have with the project creators. You could have a great project, but if you come off as incompetent, arrogant, or disingenuous, backers are going to have a difficult time connecting to your project. "Be yourself! That's rule number one,"
Find Some Help and Pay Attention to Details - finding a team to help you with your video and updates, This will remove much of the stress of creating the video from your plate as you delegate to those with skills beyond your own, pay attention to video and sound quality.
Engage Quickly - People are busy, so don't waste their time...make it compelling right from the start, Show off what you do best. If the viewer is with you after 10 seconds, then at least they may hear what your awesome project entails or your initial plea for their support. If they don't get to that point, you don't have a chance
Don't Miss Your One Chance to Impress - one of the most common mistakes in campaign videos is poorly planned or simply not thought through the content or audience. A second is poor production quality to the point where it's completely distracting. Your objective is to inspire confidence. (309)
4) Mobile is BI’s Big Stick
http://www.information-management.com/blogs/mobility-Business-Intelligence-big-stick-10023646-1.html
Touching on the area of: reaching and building your “Crowd in the Cloud”, the ever growing use of Social Media sites and venues to communicate and share information becomes a more and more valuable, even critical source for locating, connecting with and building your CROWD.
Just about all the business intelligence research analyst firms now break out mobility apps in their research work......lots of people have come to the realization that tablets and other smart devices are already the de facto platform for BI app development. this leads to the all important issues in how these “users’, and in CrowdFunding terms , potential Supporter and Funders, can be identified, and gathered together in a supportive and reactive, Crowd.
As platforms cross paths and purpose specific lightweight information applications increasingly come to bear, collaborative BI and Cloud BI are coming together with mobile over time to become the mainstream.
For anyone who missed it, 2012 has been the year of the four horsemen of social, mobile, analytic and cloud technologies. It may have been Cognizant
who first described these "SMAC" modalities and understood the four things are interdependent and jointly synergistic. Gartner calls roughly the same mix “
The Nexus of Forces;” Saugauck calls it “
The Boundary-Free Enterprise;” IDC is calling it the “
Third Platform.” Google “SMAC” or other combinations and you’ll see that this year saw a lot of ink on the topic(s).
The key to recognizing these trends in the overall information gathering world, is your Crowd is going Mobile!
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5) Do you use Google Analytics for your website? If so, what has been your experience and what is the cost?
http://www.linkedin.com/answers/startups-small-businesses/small-business/STR_SMB/1074978-25188885
Given the importance of research in any CrowdFunding effort, a few moments on the importance of effective, low cost and valuable tools to utilize with your Innovative Product/Service web site, your Campaign video and your overall Electronic ( Internet based) Brand Identity. The understanding your “effectiveness” is the use of good analytical tools. This link will give you some Small Business Professional insight to the value they find with their Google environment:
“
One of the significant advantages of using the internet to market a business or provide a service online is that effectiveness can be measured relatively easily and in great detail. These are key to understanding and improving your efforts on the internet. Analytics tools are an essential part of this analysis...”. Dick Slackman -Owner Tenby Technologies
“It is imperative in my opinion to use google analytics on any website. Not only is it free, but it has established itself as the trusted source for verifying traffic and profitability.....”
Joshua LindseyCapital Business Solutions