[robomartin]

Tangentially on topic: I am surprised that Kickstarter doesn't have a way for members to sign-up for updates of various kinds. I am almost exclusively interested in technology projects. I would love to get daily emails featuring new tech projects. No such thing exists. I don't visit Kickstarter every day. What's ends-up happening is that I sometimes miss out on really interesting projects because I don't know they existed. Some of the most interesting ones I've discovered through HN and other sources but not KS.

I imagine they are missing out on a pile of revenue by not establishing a good connection with members.

[avalaunch]

The powers that be at KS seem more interested in pushing projects they personally like (artsy projects) instead of tailoring their recommendations to each user. As such I find their newsletter useless as I imagine a lot of people do.

[calbear81]

Arts and Culture are part of their founding DNA and you can see how hard they are trying to retain the spirit of Kickstarter to fund projects that may not have clear commercial value by giving more face time to these projects.

When Kickstarter put in place restrictions on pre-sales and other types of projects (http://www.kickstarter.com/blog/kickstarter-is-not-a-store), they were primarily addressing the hardware/tech category that changed the core nature of what Kickstarter was meant for.

[avalaunch]

Usually with a platform you want to go with the flow. If the users use it in an unexpected manner - you learn from that and optimize for it. Instead they're fighting their users. It's admirable that they're sticking with their mission but it definitely leaves the door open for someone to leapfrog them.

[clauretano]

They could even automatically figure out projects you'd be interested in based on data collected from other backers "people who backed this project also backed" as well as simply using categories you have backed in the past. This is something where I think they'd get quite a few people signed up to a daily or weekly email about new campaigns.

Just the other day I was complaining about this. As someone who tends to back tech and film projects, and lives in Seattle, a film project about the Seattle tech scene went totally under my radar until I had read about the tech company I work for being one of the main backers of it --just hours after the funding period had ended.

[dublinben]

Kickstarter really is terrible for actually finding projects to fund. I've only ever found interesting projects through completely external media sources as well. This could be a major competitive advantage for IndieGogo if they were to tackle this problem. I'd be willing to get a targeted newsletter of interesting projects from them.