The thing that excites me most (as a realist with a soft spot for anarchy) is the potential for crowdfunding to deliver public goods.<p>One example is a pitch I saw at DjangoCon, someone was running a kickstarter campaign for a detailed open-source tutorial for some software (if not a public good, open-source is definitely a commons). I just saw another on crowdtilt's [testimonials page](<a href="https://www.crowdtilt.com/campaigns" rel="nofollow">https://www.crowdtilt.com/campaigns</a>). Apparently some enterprising Dallas residents have come up with a [direct, real-world response](<a href="http://i.imgur.com/1LI5U.png" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/1LI5U.png</a>) to the ever-present whine, "but who will build the roads!".
There are a lot of industries where crowdfunding makes the most sense as a payment mechanism. There are always ads in college dorms for package deals on spring break trips to Florida or ski weekends - they will be so much easier to make happen with crowdfunding.<p>As the activation energy for getting folks together to do fun stuff gets lowered, I'm excited to see what event planning companies start coming up with. Surely there are new party/travel/event offerings that now make business sense thanks to crowdfunding.
For those of you that missed it, I took some video on my iPhone:
<a href="http://youtu.be/1Rl1TJG17Wk?t=35s" rel="nofollow">http://youtu.be/1Rl1TJG17Wk?t=35s</a><p>Way to go Crowdtilt! Looking forward to the next one!