Thunderclap (website)
Headquarters | New York City, New York State, U.S. |
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Founder(s) |
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Website |
thunderclap |
Alexa rank | 18,805 (May 2014)[1] |
Type of site | Crowdspeaking |
Launched | April 28, 2009 |
Thunderclap is a "crowdspeaking" platform that lets individuals and companies rally people together to spread a message. The site uses an "all-or-nothing" model similar to crowdfunding sites such as Kickstarter, in that if the campaign does not meet its desired number of supporters in the given time frame, the organizer receives none of the donations.
On Thunderclap, backers donate tweets and social media posts rather than money.
Overview
Thunderclap is owned by De-De, a New York City-based product development studio, which is backed by Australian advertising executive David Droga.[2] Site founder David Cascino says that the idea for the site came to him when he saw a Occupy Wall Street protestor speaking through a megaphone through a crowd and noticed that the crowd was repeating the message, word-for-word. "I realized there's no way to do this exact thing online. There's no way that people can band together to amplify a message. I saw an opportunity that I had to fill." [3]
Campaigns can range between activism, fundraising, films, creative projects, and product launches. Notable brands that have run Thunderclap campaigns include the White House, Major League Baseball, People (magazine), Levi's, Durex, TOMS, Sony Pictures, the Discovery Channel, Mozilla, BBC, and United Nations.[4]
Freelance journalist Hilary Wardle says:
[Thunderclap] users have to recruit a minimum of 500 supporters to their cause within seven days. These supporters sign up and agree to share a key message on Twitter, Facebook or Tumblr. Then, providing the originator has reached that target, the preset information about the project is then automatically shared with participant's followers at a specific time.[5]
Clare Aspin wrote an article[6] that includes lists of Thunderclap's benefits and downsides. Among the benefits are these:
- By getting lots of accounts to send your message to their followers, you can significantly increase the reach of your message and people who do not follow you will see it.
- It shows you the analytics and details of all of your supporters.
Among the downsides are these:
- In order to support your Thunderclap, people have to connect with the Thunderclap platform and give it permission to access their social media accounts and send messages on their behalf. Many people will not do this as they do not want to give a third party that level of control.
- The messages are all sent at the same time, so you will only really reach people who are on social media at that moment.
Thunderclap is a free service, however, it does offer paid campaigns which allow organizers more flexibility with richer pages, updates to members, and more.
See also
References
- ↑ "Thunderclap.it Site Info". Alexa Internet. Retrieved 2014-05-28.
- ↑ Kate Freeman (May 31, 2012). "'Crowdspeaking' Platform Thunderclap Pushes Your Tweets to the Masses". Mashable.
- ↑ "David Cascino "Thunderclaps" his way to ADC Gold". Art Directors Club of New York. 2014-05-28. Retrieved 2014-05-28.
- ↑ "Thunderclap for Brands". Thunderclap. Retrieved 2014-05-28.
- ↑ Wardle, Hilary (2014-03-25). "How New 'Crowdspeaking' Site Thunderclap Is Revolutionising Online Awareness Raising". The Huffington Post (United Kingdom ed.). Retrieved 2014-07-14.
- ↑ Aspin, Clare (2014-03-04). "Thunderclap: Is louder better when it comes to transmitting your message?". Canterbury, United Kingdom: Deeson Member Communications. Retrieved 2015-11-19.