Crowdfunding

While reading the story of Peter and Trudy's experience with crowdfunding in Rainie and Wellman's (2012) text Networked: The New Social Operating System, I was reminded of a comment I'd seen on Reddit:

While there is much one could say about the political implications described above of crowdfunding medically-related issues, the phenomenon has also spread to other funding needs, as well.

Arts crowdfunding has been apparent through operations like a personal favorite of mine, the Super Troopers 2 movie campaign. Inventions have also been crowdfunded, like one from a boy in Texas who created a device to stop babies from dying in hot cars. Crowdfunding has also been used for educational needs, and I have a few former colleagues who went to Kickstarter to fund classroom libraries. Social media has indeed helped crowdfunding campaigns find needed donors, as each person shares a campaign to their friends who also share that campaign.

There's no doubt that crowdfunding has made fundraising easier, but has it made our society better? While many campaigns are for worthy causes, like any other area of finance, crowdfunding can be prone to scam artists, like these highlighted in Consumer Reports. There have also been questionable funding campaigns in the past for people who were seen as less-than-deserving of sympathy, much less the public's money.

What are your feelings about crowdfunding? What do you think the future holds for crowdfunding and the average citizen?