[ Thanks to James
Maguire for this link. ]
“By now most of you have heard of crowdsourcing, the
ability to get masses of people to do work for you, oftentimes
menial tasks for low pay. An extension of this concept is
crowdfunding, whereby masses of people fund your project. Think of
virtual microlending combined with Internet philanthropy.“There are more than a dozen Web sites that facilitate
crowdfunding that range from art projects to new entrepreneurial
ventures (look at growvc.com) to magazines and more. They all
operate more or less the same way: the sites contain lists of
projects that you pick to fund. In some cases, the sites have
professionals who vet the projects and make sure that they are
legit and not just someone looking for a scam.”