Will 'Project Potato Salad' Change Kickstarter's Own Recipe?
Do you want to Kickstart your project? Many do, and it seems that Kickstarter no longer cares what you try to fund. Reacting to a weekend project that went viral — and "shattered" it's goal, as we like to say — Kickstarter was simultaneously hilarious and annoying. Potato salad may only be the tip of the iceberg.
If you're unfamiliar, someone posted a Kickstarter campaign recently to fund their potato salad endeavors. The egg, the mayo, the pickles — so many expenses! The goal was $10. It's already reached upwards of $20,000 after going viral. This project was for one batch — for one person. Stretch goals got a pizza party and different recipe trials. A new $3,000 goal invites everyone to a potato salad party; fun, and a great way to celebrate the weird success of the campaign, but not where some of the focus needs to be.
Speaking to Venture Beat, Kickstarter offered up a clever response to the hubbub. Their emailed response simply read "there's no single recipe for inspiration". That's cute, but fails to acknowledge the issue at hand, which is what led Kickstarter to change their rules the first time around.
After finding a lot of initial success, Kickstarter changed their rules to manually review each project. Junkprojects led some to dismiss it as lacking, or otherwise not worthy of being taken seriously. The 'potato salad incident' is the result of their recent move to let an algorithm inspect projects, which was meant to ease the load on staff, but also grow the service.
The issue is scaling, which can be problematic no matter the service. Kickstarter wants to grow, and we all want them to grow, but potato salad is a byproduct of their early failure in doing so — much like hone they launched the service proper. Users can, of course, fund anything they like — and anyone who donated for a potato salad project is a benevolent soul. Are we going to have to wade through all that to get to the good stuff, though?
Let's hope not. Let's hope the "recipe for success" that is Kickstarter's algorithm gets changed enough to catch this kind of stuff. Funding those "how the sausage is made" projects are neat, but salad? That's a dish best not served on Kickstarter.
Via: Venture Beat