Ideahub

CrowdSpirit - Electronic Products Crowdsourcing

I mentioned CrowdSpirit - the electronic products crowdsourcing site - about 6 months ago. If you are full of ideas like combining an internet radio with a bathroom mirror and want to try your luck at getting your ideas financed and realized then CrowdSpirit is definitely worth a look. The site has improved significantly, the business model has been well thought-through and it's attracting some significant engagement from its community of ideators.

Ideascale - What Happens Next?

It's taken almost a year but I think I've found a promising white-label ideablog - that is a service that lets you create your own ideablogs so you can use them to gather ideas about whatever you want. The ideablog service is called IdeaScale, it's in beta and offers a free trial account for a month.

The problem is that the business model is aggressively corporate in orientation: An account that allows up to 5 ideablogs is priced at $249 per month and an unlimited 'enterprise' account at $849 per month. That means you'll pay $500 per year per ideablog on the entry-level paid-for account. Ideablogs are not particularly sophisticated applications so this seems rather steep.

Nevertheless, IdeaScale ticks a lot of ideablogging boxes: Simple idea entry form, categorization and tagging of ideas, up/down voting, basic activity statistics, idea commenting and moderation (edit, delete etc), idea lifecycle stages (under review, in progress, completed etc). It also provides a handy administrator portal for managing categories, members, welcome emails, levels of moderation and customization of the layout of your ideablog (e.g. adding custom headers and footers).

IdeaScale administrators can choose to be pinged when a new user signs up, and when a new idea and/or comment is posted. They can also specify a points-based recognition system that awards a set number of points for posting an idea, posting a comment on an idea or voting for an idea. IdeaScale ideators can use a My Account link to keep track of their own ideas and the engagement they have stimulated (i.e. voting/comments) and if you are interested in an idea you can elect to be alerted by email as it develops momentum.

Social networking is an important function of all ideablogs and IdeaScale offers a number of useful features to ensure that your ideas get the exposure they deserve. There's a blog widget so you can quickly add an idea from an existing blog and a blog feed that can feed the latest ideas to a blog in addition to a standard RSS feed. Integration with Twitter is also provided. Multiple levels of interaction authorization mean that you can lock-down your ideablog or open it up to anyone who wants to post an anonymous idea.

As with every beta there's inevitably a few bugs. I posted an idea, then deleted the category it was attached to so now the idea is inaccessible. There's limited reporting at the moment but this is clearly an area that IdeaScale will be paying attention to. I think this is a very promising ideablog service that has all the basics of ideablogging well-covered. It's too pricey for individuals or probably many small businesses and non-profits, which is a shame, but at least if it succeeds attracting core business users at the current plan pricing levels, you know IdeaScale is likely to be around for a while.

So if you've got any ideas about the future of screenwriting please get over to IdeaScale, click the big orange New Idea button, signup as a user and post your ideas to my ideablog - What Happens Next?

Script Pitching Ideablog

Indieshares is a new site for moving film scripts from conception to production, ideablog style. The idea is that that scripts are pitched as short summaries and video pitches. You vote for the script pitch you like and once the script has enough votes it could be turned into a mini IPO so that you and others can buy shares in the movie to help finance its production. Shares could cost as little as $10.

According to the site: "IndieShares will only use reputable production companies and talent. When your movie is sold, any profits will be split among the shareholders." The key word here is "any". But then, as a producer, you get 'privileged' access to the production progress of the movie in the form of stills and clips and the director/crew/talent via a discussion group. If it works this is a good way to get engaged with your investment and have some fun.

Indieshares depends on a pipeline of scripts and their proprietary 'IndieScore' process to validate those scripts as worthy of pitching on the site. It all looks kosher, requesting a WGA registration number and a signed release form - just like a real studio. If your script makes it through the scoring (i.w. idea screening) process IndieShares will contact you about about optioning your script.

Like many of these kinds of script-based ideablogs (e.g. FilmForay), IndieShares is making a bet that it can successfully bypass Agents and appeal directly to writers, get enough good quality scripts to prime the pump, attract the right sort of people to view the site and consider investing, then get them to invest. It's a tall order. I can imagine this working better as a platform for an individual writer-director to pitch their script and seek investors with IndieShares taking a cut of the investment pot. In other words as a white label script pitch, punt and produce vehicle.