By Cliff Kuang
Like YouTube, Facebook, or blogging platforms, it’s almost hard to believe there was an Internet without Kickstarter, which may be the greatest testament to its success. In 2009, the site generated about $23 million for its projects–an impressive figure by all accounts–but in 2012, Kickstarter pulled in roughly 10 times that, leapfrogging the grant budget of the National Endowment for the Arts. You can find all those facts and many more in this masterful infographic created for Fast Company by Catalogtree and reported by Skylar Bergl, Jeffrey Cattel, and Lindsey Kratochwill:
Of course, Kickstarter is selling the Internet what it wants–and that accounts for a lot more than documentaries and ballet recitals. Video games are its fastest growing category, and gadgets (called “design” here) make up roughly ? of the site’s revenue.