Kickstarter is not a store, a recent blog post on the crowd sourcing site is titled. And it details changes to drive that point home.
Creators must talk about “Risks and Challenges”
Today we added a new section to the project page called "Risks and Challenges." All project creators are now required to answer the following question when creating their project:
“What are the risks and challenges this project faces, and what qualifies you to overcome them?”
We added the "Risks and Challenges" section to reinforce that creators' projects are in development. Before backing a project, people can judge both the creator's ability to complete their project as promised and whether they feel the creator is being open and honest about the risks and challenges they face.
The new section will appear below the project description of projects that launch starting today.
Even more stringent changes are coming to hardware and hard product design.
New Hardware and Product Design Project Guidelines
The development of new products can be especially complex for creators and seductive to backers. Today we’re adding additional guidelines for Hardware and Product Design projects.
They are:
Product simulations are prohibited. Projects cannot simulate events to demonstrate what a product might do in the future. Products can only be shown performing actions that they’re able to perform in their current state of development.
Product renderings are prohibited. Product images must be photos of the prototype as it currently exists.
They end with this statement: "We hope these updates reinforce that Kickstarter isn't a traditional retail experience and underline the uniqueness of Kickstarter."
I think this will definitely help keep the perceived 'balloon' from bursting. Some people think that Kickstarter is along the lines of the real-estate bubble or any of the other financial scandals to come down the pipe. I think they're overreacting- but isn't that was caused the other crises? People overreacting to the promises offered by people who might or might not have known that they can deliver. So perhaps something needed to be done to change perceptions and make people look at funding in the way it really is - a risk to help a project along, and get benefits for doing so
if it succeeds.
Personally, I don't contribute if something doesn't meet a few criteria:
1. Has a solid vision.
2. Has a near delivery date (how far depends on my trust in the principals).
3. I don't mind losing the amount contributed.
All of these work together to solidify my decision to contribute. But I don't think a lot of people look at things this way- this is especially seen as dates slip. They see the date and not the Estimated in front of it.
There was a pretty good blog post by a game developer on
his love/hate relationship with Kickstarter. A pretty good read- especially considering that many (most) of the funded projects are games of one sort or another.
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? That made him the first, not by the clock, but by perception 
. And that was notification by Gmail ... I 
