Kickstarter just announced a new livestreaming platform called Kickstarter Live last Nov. 1, and by the looks of it, the feature could prove exciting if not entirely revolutionary for the crowdsourcing platform and its community.
Ideally, Kickstarter Livestream is all about engagement and collaboration. The aim is to bring supporters and creators closer together so that campaigns generate interest and get funded.
"The key to Kickstarter Live is its intimacy. It brings creators and the people supporting them right into the same room together," Kickstarter said. "And it encourages personal connection. Viewers can ask questions, chat, send selfies, select rewards, and back the project — all while tuned in."
Regardless of how Kickstarter markets this new streaming feature, it serves as a great boon to investors who want to get to know the people behind a Kickstarter campaign, eyeball a potential investment in its infancy and proceed on monitoring what is happening with an ongoing project they support.
For startups livestreaming a project, it should be an added pressure to do better since their backers would be practically breathing on their necks, spying at their every move. Kickstarter captured this bit accurately when it alluded to how the new livestreaming feature serves to increase transparency. With it, investors are reassured that the creators they support are not sitting on their projects or wasting away their money.
Kickstarter developed Live with a Vancouver-based startup called Huzza. Like the livestreaming features offered by other platforms such as Facebook and YouTube, Kickstarter Live allows viewers to ask questions. Features unique to Kickstarter's solution include the capability to pledge support directly within the livestreaming interface.
There will probably come a time when livestreaming teams will be pestered with questions and are forced to answer them instead of working on their projects, but this is a minor issue. Not only will they able to showcase their projects real-time but also engage with investors with more tangible proofs especially when their works are truly spectacular.
Also, projects are getting livestreamed according to specific schedule. It is not yet clear whether investors can demand a 24/7 feed just to spy on a project.
At this point, live broadcasts at Kickstarter's dedicated Live page do not offer high-quality productions or fancy presentations, but they underscore the rawness and authenticity of each project. The case of the new Stretch campaign is a case in point. The goal was launched by Felipe Cagno with a livestream from his bedroom.
"It feels like the early days of Kickstarter to me," Yancey Strickler, Kickstarter CEO told Tech Crunch. "Proudly amateur. These are not slick broadcasts with fancy graphics. It's very direct: here I am, here's what I'm making. It's extremely transparent, very honest."
