Kickstarter responds to ‘failed project’ claims
Kickstarter co-founder Yancey Strickler has responded to claims that the start-up omits failed projects from the website’s search results.
Kickstarter is a platform that allows projects to be showcased and exhibited to interested communities, allowing users to contribute and donate in order to get the projects off the ground.
Last week, it was revealed that projects that didn’t reach their target were removed from the search results, therefore leaving Kickstarter with the reputation of 26,000 projects without one single failure.
Strickler has now responded, saying “This isn’t to ‘hide failure’.”
“It’s because it would be a poor user experience (there’s no action that anyone could take) and it would expose the creators of unsuccessfully funded projects to unnecessary criticism from the web (those projects would be prime for trolling).”
He went on to say that the omission from the search page was for the company’s own benefit.
“Because Kickstarter projects index very highly in search, creators were seeing their unsuccessfully funded projects ranking extremely high — in some cases as the #1 result — for their name. That obviously sucked, so we made the decision to de-index them.”
The co-founder also went on to offer advice on future prospective Kickstarter projects.
“Most unsuccessfully funded projects come up short because of a lack of interest in the project or because their creators didn’t promote it enough, not because of the Kickstarter page itself. Success on Kickstarter comes down to making a video, pricing things reasonably, and telling people about the project.”
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