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project. From their empirical work, they concluded that promotional activities on
social media have positive impacts on the crowdfunding projects. They also found
that the results of a project are much more correlated to the early promotional activi-
ties on social media rather than to its own characteristics such as project duration or
fundraising goal, and they demonstrated that promotion in social media must be
combined with the performance of actions outside the social media because while
promotion to friends increases the size of a group, the external actions through dif-
ferent channels expose the project to more groups.
Moisseyev (
2013
: 17) points out that crowdfunding backers support projects not
only by providing funds but also by using social seals of approval. After studying
several successful crowdfunding projects, the author states 546 Facebook likes as a
number of 'likes' that a project is supposed to have in order to achieve its goal.
According to the author, the index of social media seals of approval has a direct
connection with the fund obtained and with the number of supporters of the proj-
ects. His research also concludes that the number of social media followers has a
direct relation with the index of social media seals of approval.
The researcher concludes that the connection between fundraising total and
'likes' shows that, without enough 'likes', the project will not reach its objective.
Following this idea, he states that even if an author has a social profi le with few
'friends', it is better to include it because social media can rapidly transform real-
life connections into social media followers.
We grouped in eight criteria the features of Kickstarter and Indiegogo platforms
referred to engagement: (1) accessibility, (2) navigation, (3) networking, (4) feed-
back, (5) source of information, (6) time constraint, (7) applications and (8) free-
dom (see Table
10.5
). Each of this criterion is responsible for the overall engagement
developed with platform, but essentially with each project: (1) accessibility contains
the features, which refer to the coverage of the platforms and how to access them;
(2) navigation helps also to engage users. In this criteria we include the features
oriented to facilitate the navigation through the platforms: (3) networking embraces
the social networks where platforms have presence; (4) feedback cover forms to
establish asynchronous and synchronous communication through the platforms; (5)
source of information refers to the elements included in the platforms intended to
help creators to use them; (6) time constraint, as its name indicates, refers to the
time established as maximum to reach the amount of money stated as needed by the
creators; (7) applications concern tools and devices oriented to facilitate the use of
the crowdfunding platforms; (8) fi nally, freedom refers to the possibility that donors
have to contribute to the projects anonymously.
10.7
Conclusions
In a context where the diffi culties that people fi nd to have a job are pushing them to
their limits, a collective interest on helping others and on sharing things, time and
effort is visible on the cyberspace through the existence of a multitude of online
