The Crowded Room

Tune in for the bite-size version of our Crowded Room podcast, in which we cover the week’s biggest crowdsourcing and crowdfunding scoops.

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford was allegedly caught on video smoking crack, and Gawker ran a "Crackstarter" to buy it from Somali drug dealers. Plus, Planetary Resources wants to shoot a telescope into space, and has turned to the crowd for help. We discuss those stories and more in our 25th installment of the Crowded Room with Crowdsourcing.org’s Eric Blattberg, Anton Root, and Eric Mack.

The Crowded Room 24 - Headlines

The Crowded Room 24 - More Mark Cuban:

The Crowded Room Headlines - Trump Crowdfunds Edition

The Crowded Room 23 - The Donald Crowdfunds

The Crowded Room 22 - Crowdfunding for Film:

Crowded Room #21 Full Version

Listen to our bite-sized podcast of the week's top crowdsourcing and crowdfunding headlines, in which we cover all the most important developments in the industries and the broader world of the crowd, and all in less than 10 minutes. For the full half-hour version of the podcast, which includes the headlines and more in-depth discussion of the reaction to our top stories -- efforts to crowdsource the investigation into the Boston Marathon bombings and problems with crowdfunding payments -- visit the main episode page here for full audio and video versions. For just the top headlines, play or download this short version below:

The Crowded Room 20 - Headline Version

In this episode of The Crowded Room, we look at the crowd's response to the bomb attack on the Boston Marathon, from Reddit's attempt to crowdsource the search for suspects, to the thousands that gave even more to crowdfunding campaigns in support of bombing victims.

In the Crowded Room this week: massolution's 2013CF: The Crowdfunding Industry Report makes headlines around the world by putting real-world numbers and data to the rapidly growing Crowdfunding market. We review some of the report's finding in our Google+ Hangout this week and also take a look at a couple of groundbreaking crowdsourcing efforts from Walmart and GE. All that, plus a look at Crowdsupply, the company that considers itself to be a store and crowdfunding platform in one.

In the Crowded Room this week: A Kickstarter to send a 9-year-old girl to a camp to make a video game may or may not be a fraud, but it’s definitely one of the most controversial crowdfunding campaigns of the past week that has lit up communities like Reddit. That, plus more funding for more  crowdfunding! Specifically 12 million dollars of funding from big names for Crowdtilt, a platform that Reddit fans are also familiar with. It aims to make crowdfunding more social by encouraging groups to gather and fund everything from charity causes to vacations. Finally, we discuss why anyone interested in crowdsourcing should spend more time in a casino.

This week Veronica Mars is back with a rocket ship of a crowdfunding campaign for a new movie, and we'll also look at how the crowd is being asking to help keep parts of Yellowstone National Park open because Congress can't, and an open innovation campaign to try and put an end to mass atrocities. Plus, is Kickstarter's popularity sagging? One analyst thinks so, and we try to explain why he's wrong. That's all in this 17th episode of The Crowded Room, now with video!

Live crowdfunding (kind of) has launched with an iOS app in use at the LAUNCH startup festival in San Francisco this week. Contributor Paul Spinrad went to the festival to see it in action and reports back. Also in the Crowded Room, we talk about Waze handing the keys to its crowdsourced navigation app to its users, a company that helps crowdfunded projects "Make That Thing" that they promised, and also the story of an honest panhandler and the crowdfunding campaign to reward him that's met its goal almost 200 times over.