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Comment by mcphilip | Hacker News Reader

The change in terminology would seem to imply that Kickstarter is now wising up to the fact that there will inevitably be a high profile failure to deliver in the near future and is now trying to preempt criticism against Kickstarter not laying out clearly enough the risks involved in backing a project.

I welcome this change and think that it will help in the long run.

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There's already been a high profile failure to deliver, and it was a software project. Diaspora.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/196017994/diaspora-the-p...

People are used to big software budgets producing nothing.

It's an entirely different value proposition failure when they paid $100 expecting to receive a light bulb or gaming console only to end up empty-handed.

Except that Diaspora is alive and delivered on its project.

https://www.joindiaspora.com

https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora

Didn't deliver on destroying Facebook though, which was (generally) what backers (half-heartedly) hoped for.

Not saying they didn't succeed, just that there are similar lessons about expectations there.

Destroying Facebook was never what they promised. They promised an alternative. What they delivered was in line with the amount of funding they received.

There's a code base that's functional, and available for anyone. The project wasn't a failure. It just didn't take.

Not to mention active, ongoing development, including regularly adding new features and a several hundred thousand strong community. It's not a Facebook-killer, but it's a reasonable social network as-is.

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