Crowdfunding webOS!? Incredible!
March
10,
2011
What is webOS? webOS is a mobile operating system, initially developed by Palm, that is now part of HP. The software was introduced by Palm in January 2009 and was widely acclaimed following its unveiling for its integration of Web 2.0 technologies, open architecture, multitasking capabilities, and ease of use. RocketHub is proud to support the webOS development community through an official category page: webOS.RocketHub.com
Geoffrey Gauchet is the first (of many to come) webOS developer to successfully crowdfund his project via RocketHub. His incredibly fast success amazed even us at HQ. So we had to get the scoop on how Geoffrey did it:
What was the inspiration behind the webOS project you are currently running on RocketHub? Why is it important to you and to the webOS community?
I'm a big social media fan and between my personal life and by business life, I run lots of accounts on a variety of networks. Opening up my Twitter app, switching between 4 accounts, then opening the Facebook app, then Foursquare, then Flickr, then Untappd, etc -- it got really daunting. I decided there had to be an app that merged all of this activity into one chronological stream. In the early alpha builds I'm using myself, I can consume all of this content in a few minutes, as opposed to an hour or more. This increases my productivity a lot because that's less time goofing off on social sites and more time getting real things done. In addition to being a highly functional app, I'm a firm believer that all apps -- whether they have 1 function or 100 functions -- should look good doing it. So I'm taking a lot of care in the design, too. Ever since I brought up the idea for the incredible! (which I hyped a lot before even mentioning what it did), the webOS community has been craving it. It struck a chord with a wide variety of users with a variety of use cases.
How has your experience been as a crowdfunding pioneer in the world of webOS development - how are your supporters and fellow developers responding?
The response was insane. I think I hit the 50% mark like 4 hours after I posted the project. I set a window of 45 days on the project, not even expecting to make my goal, but instead, I hit my goal in something like 72 hours. There seems to be some buzz around the idea of crowdfunding other apps. I honestly thought people would call me greedy or something similar, but instead, the community as a whole -- including Palm and HP employees -- touted the project as a great idea and threw in as much as they could afford to. To see people giving money to someone they never met for an app that isn't even available yet was really something.
Any advice for Creatives looking to crowdfund a project?
I had it a little easier than most, I think, because I have two somewhat high profile apps in the App Catalog already, so I have a good-sized userbase already. But if you're looking to fund your first project, spend a lot of time engaging the community. People didn't fuel my project just because I wrote some decent apps. They did it because I'm an active member of the community. I'm a webOS user first and a developer second. Definitely do whatever you can to plant yourself firmly into the ground in a community. People will give money to someone they've never met, but they're less likely to give money to someone they've never heard of. The other piece of advice is to promote, promote, promote! I posted every day on Twitter and Facebook (only once a day; don't want to annoy people). I blogged about it. I even wrote up a fake interview where I interviewed myself about the project. People like funny stuff. People don't like parting with money, so if you can make them laugh while doing, I find that helps.
Great advice and nice job getting the developer community and HP/Palm involved. Congratulations on your awesome campaign! Take a look at incredible! for webOS: Lifestreaming for the 21st Century and join us in welcoming the webOS community to RocketHub.
-Vlad
