Is there a place that lists the projects that ended up being a failure? I'm curious what the failure rate of Kickstarter is, and if fraud artists are attempting to rip people off via it. Also, if the failure rate starts increasing, would that jeopardize the entire business model, if people lose confidence that the projects will see the light of day?
According to Kickstarter [1] the success rate was 43% in 2010 and 46% in 2011. Wikipedia [2] suggests the success rate so far in 2012 is 44%, but the source is no longer available.
I don't know if that's just the success rate of crossing the funding threshold or success rate of delivering the project as well.
From Kickstarter's point of view, they enabled Diaspora to raise a big pile of money so that they could _attempt_ something. So it was a great success.
I never held out much hope for Diaspora. For the most part I only use Facebook to connect with people that are helplessly or willfully ignorant of the issues that led to Diaspora in the first place.
You could make the same exact argument on the same exact basis about the stock market. Yet it looks like kickstarter is far, far and away superior to that model in terms of translating initial funding to successful projects.
