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Kickstarter celebrates its third birthday with a look back at site designs that never were

Kickstarter celebrates its third birthday with a look back at site designs that never were

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Kickstarter has dug up some of its original site prototypes to show what the service could have looked like. There's even a MySpace widget.

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Kickstarter whiteboard design
Kickstarter whiteboard design

It was three years ago Saturday that Kickstarter went live for the world, and to celebrate its anniversary the founders have taken a look back at some of the site's earliest designs. Though it launched in 2009, Kickstarter — or Kickstartr, as it was originally known — was in the works much longer, with designs dating back as far as 2006. These are versions of the site that never really existed and it took a few tries to reach something close to what we now know as Kickstarter. Along the way the team even designed a widget for MySpace. The very first successful project managed to raise $35 from three different backers, though we wonder if the team ever imagined that just a few years later projects would be able to raise millions.