Kickstarter’s best of 2012: 2.2M backers, $319M raised, 18K projects funded

Kickstarter released its “best of” list for 2012, and the numbers are impressive: 2.24 million people funded at least one project and pledged a total of $319 million. That’s more than $600 per minute over the course of the year, with 18,109 projects successfully funded.

The crowdsourced funding platform remained true to its artistic roots. Despite many well-known gadget Kickstarter campaigns like the Ouya gaming console, which raised $8.6 million, the biggest categories included games at $83 million raised, followed by film and video, design, then music, with technology coming in fifth place with $29 million.

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1. Games: $83.1 million
2. Film & video: $57.9 million
3. Design: $50.1 million
4. Music: $35 million
5. Technology: $29 million
6. Publishing: $15.3 million
7. Food: $11.1 million
8. Art: $10.5 million
9. Comics: $9.2 million
10. Theater: $7.1 million
11. Fashion: $6.3 million

Almost 600,000 people backed two or more projects, with 50,047 backing 1o or more, and a very dedicated 452 people backing an incredible 100 or more projects: essentially one every three days.

The category with the most funded projects was music, with 5,067 projects funded, but games took in the most cash: $83 million. An astonishing 17 projects took in over $1 million each.

Highlighted projects include:

• Double Fine Adventure (a game that collected $3.3 million)
• Balloon Mapping Kits (DIY mapping efforts that Google included in Maps)
• MaKey MaKey (an invention kit that received over half a million in pledges)
• Safecast X Kickstarter Geiger Counter (an open-source Geiger counter)
• The Edge and Back (6th graders who raised $5,100 to send a camera to space and bring it back)
• 3G Space Suit (a civilian’s space suit)
• Pizza Brain (the world’s first pizza museum)
• 1,000 Student Projects in Space (1,000 student experiments in ping-pong balls, sent to space)
• Baghdad Community Hackerspace (the name says it all)
• OpenROV (an open-source underwater robot)

18,109 projects funded? I think we can safely say that’s 18,109 chunks of awesome.

Image credit: Crowdsourcing