We’ve talked a lot about Diaspora, the open-source Facebook-alternative, in recent months. One of the reasons for that is the massive success they had raising money on the crowdsourced fund-raising site, Kickstarter. The project raised over $200,000 from nearly 6,500 backers in just 39 days. Now a new project has already blown that tally out of the water: an iPod nano-based multi-touch wristwatch.
Scott Wilson, the founder of Chicago-based product and design studio, MINIMAL, set out with an idea: to create two watch enclosures for Apple’s latest iPod nano. He wanted the TikTok to be a low-end model ($35) and the LunaTik to be high-end ($70). So he put his project on Kickstarter with a goal of raising $15,000. So how is he doing?
Well, he’s raised $341,895. And he still has 22 days to go.
Wow.
Wilson’s project has not only blown past the high-profile Diaspora one, it’s poised to demolish the all-time funding leader, the Save Blue Like Jazz movie. That project raised $345,992 when it closed on October 25. Wilson’s project should pass it tomorrow, if not tonight after I publish this post.
And with good reason. While the idea is a simple one (Apple CEO Steve Jobs even joked about such an idea on stage to highlight how small the nano is), but it’s something a lot of people clearly want. The project has 4,636 backers so far. And the video Wilson made to accompany the project (below) looks quite a bit like an Apple-produced video.
Wilson had a goal of shipping the TikTok by late December and the LunaTik by mid January. At first, money was the issue. Now it seems as if demand may be the bigger problem. (To be clear, given the prices he’s selling these for, the iPod nano is not included.)
Again, the project still has 22 days to go on its funding run. I have to imagine it’s going to shoot well past $500,000, putting it far atop the Kickstarter Hall of Fame.
Update 11/25: And sure enough, it’s now that biggest Kickstarter project ever. It has now raised over $370,000 from over 5,000 backers so far. And there are still 21 days to go…
[thanks David]
Kickstarter is the world’s largest funding platform for creative projects. Every week, tens of thousands of people pledge millions of dollars to projects from the worlds of music, film, art, technology, design, games, fashion, food, publishing, and other creative fields. Since its launch on April 28th, 2009, more than two million people have pledged more than $300 million to projects by creators who always maintain full ownership and complete creative control of their work.
Started by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne, Apple has expanded from computers to consumer electronics over the last 30 years, officially changing their name from Apple Computer, Inc. to Apple, Inc. in January 2007. Among the key offerings from Apple’s product line are: Pro line laptops (MacBook Pro) and desktops (Mac Pro), consumer line laptops (MacBook Air) and desktops (iMac), servers (Xserve), Apple TV, the Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server operating systems, the iPod, the...
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