> Contrary to what many people think, people don’t find new projects through Kickstarter

This is a major failing of KS and one that I simply cannot understand why they don't fix. Project discovery is horrible.

I am mostly interested in technology projects. One look at the projects I've supported makes this very obvious. Yet, for some unbelievable reasons I keep getting these "what's new on Kickstarter" emails promoting art projects. Sorry, I enjoy art but I have nearly zero interest in most arts projects on KS (I did back one a long time ago).

This also means that I completely miss out on some projects unless I read about them elsewhere or laboriously browse through KS to try and decipher what's new. The second part is another failing.

The website is not designed for easy discovery. I couldn't care less about their staff picks. They don't have enough people to cover the range of tastes and interests out there. What I want to see are tools to list projects based on various sorted criteria of my own choosing. "Popular this week" is also horrible.

For example, I want to visit the site today and list technology projects in chronological order with the newest project at the top of the list. Add a layer to that and allow me to, perhaps, filter by keyword or some other criteria. Let me discover what's new on my own.

Then, once I've created a search and sort criteria, let me subscribe to email updates based on that criteria. eBay does this pretty well and, therefore, promotes discovery without members having to actively spend hours browsing the site every n days in order not to miss out on bargains.

There's also a missing layer when it comes to helping campaigns succeed. I've seen campaign that failed but raised a fair amount of money. Because I never learned of the project I did not have an opportunity to support it. I would imagine this is the case for thousands of people who, like me, are too busy to remember to check KS every Monday (or whatever). Their lack of discovery tools damages project owners by not allowing them to reach the entire KS addressable market for their project.

Further to that, KS is also failing at connecting the dots. If someone is consistently supporting tech gizmos for photography it is likely that they'll appreciate a quick email when someone posts a new project in that domain. This would create instant traction for a lot of projects that are never discovered until it is too late.

Anyhow, I enjoy Kickstarter but really can't understand why they don't seem interested in doing a better job. I know they started it more as a destination for art projects and that's what they try to promote. Well, like it or not, they make most of their money off other kinds of project --mostly technology from what I can see. Isn't it high time that they accept reality and make major site improvements in order to reflect the patterns their audience exhibits?

At some level there's a huge opportunity here to do this really well by helping project originators reach an audience as well as supporters discover that which they are interested in. Do this really well and people should flock to the solution. From an entrepreneurial standpoint nothing is harder than marketing and reaching an audience. KS is squandering the data they have and forcing project originators to almost start from zero for every project, despite the massive audience KS could reach with one email.