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88% there: "Don't Mess With The Internet" billboard in Lamar Smith's district
- lowglow 15y agoHaving been born in Texas, I fully support this design. :D
- joshontheweb 15y agoMe too, go Texas! Although I'll never move back. Too hot!
- midas 15y agoI don't normally give to charity, but this is totally awesome.
- acav 15y agoLove it - seriously awesome way to use crowdtilt
- jjb123 15y agoAs one of the co-founders of crowdtilt, I figure we'd mention that this is our fastest growing campaign to break $10k (2 days) to date. Not saying a _whole_ lot since it's only been about a month since launch, but still cool to see it go from Alexis' idea of "let's toss it up and see what happens" to ~90% funded in that time frame.
- brandnewlow 15y agoIf you can be "imgur for crowdfunding", i.e. the crowdfunding platform that Redditors use, that's a pretty darn solid place to start from.
- redthrowaway 15y agoKickstarter's got a pretty solid grasp on the reddit crowd at the moment, though.
- jjb123 15y agoYeah, we think the models that Kickstarter/Indiegogo have for projects and pre-sale retail is pretty amazing and we actually see campaigns that go up on our site that are more suited for a model like Kickstarter. With Crowdtilt, we've essentially taken our favorite elements of crowdfunding models like those and provided it for groups of friends/existing networks instead (so think of it for funding a wedding gift between bridesmaids or renting out a bar for sxsw, instead of a documentary or creative project).
- redthrowaway 15y agoThat's a pretty cool idea. I could see integrating it with facebook events and invites being a logical next step.
- jjb123 15y agoThanks, and yes those are steps we're actually working on right now :) Give the site a try sometime and let us know any feedback you have that could improve the experience: team @ crowdtilt.com
- rdl 15y agoIt would be nice if you could expose the velocity of contributions somehow, at least when that is exciting. And otherwise figure out how to add artificial time pressure to campaigns, which is one thing real life charity fundraising does pretty successfully.
- jjb123 15y agowe actually want to provide a pretty substantial dashboard to admins so they can see (and like us, get obsessed with) things like referral traffic, the referrals with the most value/contributed, the velocity of contributions you've mentioned, etc... But we never thought of providing those kinds of metrics to general visitors actually. That's good feedback rdl, thanks. (most uses of the site are for a "kickstarter for groups of friends" where instead of a $30,000 documentary, it's a $1,300 party-bus where like an evite, you share the link/campaign with your group instead of strangers just coming across it through a "browse" page)
- nkassis 15y agoHey I have a small comment. I'm in Canada currently but I have a US credit card, yet I didn't see anyway to get past the non-US user page. Also I was a little put off by registration page since it at first seems like you need facebook and the non-facebook options is in little print. When you click that link it and the name and email box appear would in my view be a better registration box to put first.
- knighthacker 15y agoIt should be fixed now. Could you please try again and let me know? my email is khaled@crowdtilt.com We are also working on a better login/sign-up flow. I appreciate your feedback.
- nkassis 15y agoIt works now thank you.
- ax 15y agoI'm curious, what do you do differently from Kickstarter? What makes your product more ideal for small ticket items?
- jjb123 15y agoax, the link that started this thread is actually a good example of something that is possible through Crowdtilt and not through Kickstarter. groupfunding, as we call it, allows you to pool funds for anything from a $4,100 airbnb house for a bachelor party to a $1,800 campaign for a friend's dog's surgery (two examples of campaigns that tilted today that wouldn't be a use case for Kickstarter). Hope that helps!
- davemel37 15y agoI wonder if the Billboard Owners are large pro-SOPA media companies. IT would suck if this money went right back into the Pro-SOPA lobby. A better strategy might be hacking the billboard system by buying up remnant space and cancelling after a month. Since it costs money to take down Billboards, and remnant boards are remnant for a reason, they will probably stay up for several months without paying for more than a month. (If they get PSA pricing, it will be even cheaper.)
- saryant 15y agoAren't ClearChannel and Viacom the two big billboard companies? That's just going by the logos I see at the bottom. If so, you're right. This is money going right back into their pockets. Though I know area around his San Antonio office might have some private billboards set up by local landowners in the area. He's right off a major highway. Maybe one of those is a possible choice?
- davemel37 15y agoAlso, CBS, Van Wagner and others... More importantly, the amount of red tape you have to go through to get a billboard up is crazy, so I can't imagine every billboard company isn't in bed with the politicians.
- knighthacker 15y agoI love it :). It is fun watching this campaign move so fast.
- uptown 15y agoDoes anybody really think this is going to have an influence on Lamar Smith? Maybe I'm just jaded, but I don't see this as changing anything aside from giving money to a billboard company, and emptying the pockets of donors.
- felipemnoa 15y agoWhat do you suggest could be done? Is not bad to attack an opponent from different directions.
- uptown 15y agoI'm not sure. I just don't think this is it.
- bostonvaulter2 15y agoI think it would be a good vector for news articles about the issue.. Especially local ones.
- tocomment 15y agoI think it's a very good start. The internet community needs to do more and more "offline" activities to effect change.
- joshontheweb 15y agoIt'll piss him off at least, which is probably enough to justify most donors cost ;)
- jasonkester 15y agoStrange that they'd put together a whole page about this without ever mentioning who this person is or what he's doing that messes with the internet. There seems to be a tendency among people who are really involved with politics to assume that everybody else is also really involved with politics, and therefore don't need any explanation about why we should be so angry about whatever it is we're supposed to be angry about. But we're not. So if you want us to get behind your cause, you're going to need to tell us what it is. Possibly on your giant billboard itself.
- lordgilman 15y agoHe was the sponsor of SOPA.
- avree 15y agoI think they assumed that most people who'd be donating to the cause already were aware about SOPA, and Lamar Smith (the representative who sponsored SOPA.) Maybe a faulty assumption!
- zinkem 15y agoHopefully everyone in Lamar Smith's district knows who Lamar Smith is and what he stands for. SOPA triggered a mainstream debate and you don't need to be 'really involved in politics' to know that. This sentiment that people with political agendas need to inform their potential constituents is what has created our current political problems in America. When people don't pay attention, anyone who can attract eyeballs and make a reasonable sounding argument gets to do as they please. If we were paying attention, we wouldn't let these people wreak havoc in our society. edit: What does it mean to live in a democracy where nobody knows whats going on? I know we're all familiar with and jaded to the current state of affairs, but I'm asking that we spend more time thinking about that state of affairs and what we expect of ourselves and our politicians.
- natrius 15y ago"Hopefully everyone in Lamar Smith's district knows who Lamar Smith is and what he stands for." That's some misplaced hope.
- ComputerGuru 15y agoI know all about the Lamar Smith debacle, and even to me, this billboard would be ridiculously vague. This is more of a gloating-esque billboard, not an effective one. I completely support the idea, but I think this as poor of "an implementation" as possible.
- SoftwareMaven 15y agoI don't think the artwork shown is the actual billboard artwork. They said in the post they want to make sure they have money before spending effort on real art.
- draggnar 15y agoMaybe it's just a conversation starter?
- seddona 15y agoa very interesting direction for Crowdtilt. I'm interested to see how democratised crowd funding for political intent plays out.
- tocomment 15y agoIt his the same thing as the super PAC that was started for this same purpose? Or is this an unrelated group of people doing a second billboard?
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- plasma 15y agoThe billboard should probably be Facebook, Reddit, Twitter etc logos with Lamar Smith holding a gun shooting them with "Stop Lamar Smith from destroying the internet".
- zachrose 15y agoThe billboard should probably be a computer in cowboy hat.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]