Do you know that in 1795, French despot Napoleon Bonaparte offered 12,000 francs as a reward for a grand challenge to preserve food?
Or that Nike’s gamified platform Nike+ helped it to capture nearly 50% of the running shoe market?
Tag: crowdsourcing
Crowdtivate Unveils 12 Asia-based Projects for Crowdfunding
Do you wanna fund a start-up?
If so, good news! StarHub’s Crowdtivate – an Asian-focused crowdfunding platform launched in April this year – now has 12 Asia-based projects available for support. As a rewards-based platform, Crowdtivate mandates that listed projects should provide different levels of rewards for funders of differing quantums, with a minimum sum of S$5. Often, funders will enjoy a special “early bird” price for a new product as its backers.
Crowdfunding – The Asian Story
Is there a crowdfunding market in Asia? How does it differ from the West?
According to a Business Times article late last year, the crowdfunding market potential for South East Asia is projected to grow to some US$8.9 billion come 2025. In Singapore, total venture capital funds in start-ups were only about S$25.2 million in 2012 – a proverbial drop in the vast ocean considering our status as a financial hub. Against such a backdrop, it is evident that there is much potential for crowd-sourced funds to grow.
Thanks to a presentation by Nicola Castelnuovo of Crowdonomic at the recent Crowdsourcing Week Global 2014, I picked up a thing or two about the crowdfunding eco-system in our neck of the woods.
StarHub embraces Crowdfunding with Crowdtivate
Poster child of the burgeoning crowdsourcing movement, crowdfunding is estimated by Massolution to have raised some US$5.1 billion globally in 2013. Internationally, US-based players like Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and RocketHub have kicked butt, while the Asian scene has been relatively quiet.
Until now.
How Crowdsourcing Grows Global Brands
“Participation is the new brand.” – Chaordix
“The future of organisations is bringing chaos and order together” – Dee Hock (founder of VISA)
Is Crowdsourcing Rocking Your World?
Well, Sean Moffitt (above), author of Wikibrands, seem to think so. And he isn’t the only one.
If you’ve followed the news, you would know that Singapore start up Pirate3D (a 3D printer maker) raised a staggering $366,763 from crowd funding platform Kickstarter just 24 hours after being listed! With almost 2,000 backers, the firm has already raised close to $770,000 in total which is way above its $100,000 target.
SPF’s First Facebook Arrest – Crowdsleuthing in Action
Congratulations to our boys and girls in blue for making the first Facebook arrest!
According to the Singapore Police Force’s (SPF) media release, this development came on 11 Nov 2011 (an auspicious 11/11/11!) when a “public-spirited person called 999 and informed that he could identify a loanshark suspect from a photo posted on the Police Facebook Page since July 2009. The action led to the arrest of two 19 year old suspects for involvement in loanshark harassment activities in the Bukit Merah area.
We, the Citizen Journalists of Singapore
Recently tackled as part of Nexus 2007, “Crowdsourcing the Media” looked at how citizen journalism was changing the dynamics of the media landscape. It saw social media provocateur Kevin Lim moderating a session with online media luminaries Kathy Teo of CNET Networks, Jennifer Lewis of SPH‘s STOMP, and James Seng, Editor extraordinaire of tomorrow.sg (Left to right above).
Discussions centred around citizen journalism and its various forms (youtube, wikipedia etc) and included fascinating insights into how CNET and STOMP operated. As Jennifer puts it, there tend to be more “loser-generated” rather than “user-generated” content, and she does get her fair share of junk being MMS-ed and SMS-ed to her via 75557.