Kickstarter wants to make it easier for potential backers to find specific types of projects and browse projects pertaining to certain themes. They also want to be able to display which types of projects are trending on the site at any given time.
That’s why they’ve just introduced hashtags on their discover page.
“Over time, we’ve noticed certain themes and trends running through the projects on Kickstarter — some for a week, some for years. Tags give us a new way to share these patterns with everyone.
Tags aren’t tethered to a specific category. Instead they reflect a common philosophy (#Civic), shared subject matter (#Science), themes (#Zombies), accolades (#Sundance), and a bunch of other stuff too. We’ll be adding and rotating tags constantly as new trends pop up throughout the site. These will be listed in the sidebar of the Discover page,” says Kickstarter.
So these tags are different, and in a way much more specific than categories like “music” “film” or “games.”
You can check out the trending #tags on the Kickstarter Discover page. People looking to browse projects can now do so by location, category, tag, and other groupings like “recently launched” and “most funded.”
Kickstarter says that you can help make the #tags better. If you see a type of project that’s trending or want your project that you just launched to be tagged, just send them a tweet.