Kluster.com just might be onto something big. They’ve created an online social community! Wow… OK, sarcasm aside, there is, of course, a bit more to Kluster than being a simple online community. The site and the community have actual purpose. Put simply, the site brings together talented people to work towards, and actually accomplish, common goals.

Once you sign up for the site, you’ll go through the standard steps that you generally need to deal with once you join any other online community: background, interests, avatar selection, etc. However, for each segment of your profile that you fill in, you’ll also receive a quantity of “watts” that get added onto the 1,000 watts you receive for signing up. I’ll get to what these are for in a bit but think of Watts as your Kluster currency. However, in an effort to avoid getting ahead of myself, let me explain what the site is all about.

Companies and individuals submit “projects’ to the site. These projects are basically ideas that are to be developed by the Kluster community. Depending on the size and scope of the project, the process of development is broken down into varying phases of deliverables. From there, users take part in pitching, refining and investing in the ideas and concepts that they hope will win that Phase. I’ll use a simple example from the site to explain.

A company called Holsh needed a logo. Instead of contracting it out to a designer, they pitched it as a one-phase project on Kluster with a $5,000 reward. From here, interested community members signed up to work on the project. A first step in the process had members submit their design concepts for the logo. The submission of this concept/idea is referred to as a “spark.” By doing this, that member get an immediate 20% stake in the idea if it “graduates” from the phase (i.e. is chosen as the winning logo.) However, much more can be done once this design is posted.

Each spark can also be refined. The refining of a spark is called an “amp.” Sticking with our example of the Holsh logo, this would mean that someone took a logo idea and tweaked it; changed a color, added a lightning bolt, whatever. This tweak would be referred to as an amp.

On top of taking part in the creation and modification of ideas (sparks and amps), users can also “invest” in the ideas that they feel are the best. This is where the aforementioned watts come into play. You earn them by, as mentioned, signing up for the site as well as taking part in surveys and wisely investing in successful ideas. The more watts that you invest into an idea, the greater the “stake” you have in it. So if you invest 1000 watts in an idea that has a total of 5000 watts invested into it, your investment stake is 20%. Following me so far? Radical.

Now, like any investment, your return is dependent on how successful the idea is. If the idea isn’t chosen, then it becomes worthless and you’ll lose all of your invested watts. However, if the idea (sorry, I know I’ve fallen out of calling the ideas sparks and amps) IS chosen and IS successful, you get back all of your invested watts on top of your share of the idea’s earnings. The earnings are comprised of the watts invested into losing ideas as well as the reward money that was staked for that Phase by the project’s owner. That’s right, on top of your Kluster play money, you also earn actual, honest to dog, REAL money. Why shouldn’t you? After all, you are acting as either a developer or consultant for a real-world project.

Projects on Kluster can be incredibly involved. A project’s timeline may include Phases that cover, on top of product development, branding, product launch, marketing and advertising. In essence, the community becomes the entire infrastructure of a new business. Kluster takes the concept of My Football Club and expands enormously upon it.

A great example of what the community is capable of is happening as I write this. They are working alongside the attendees at this year’s TED Conference that is taking place between February 27th and March 1st. During the conference’s 72-hour timeframe, everyone will work towards developing an actual product. Here are further details yanked from Core77’s design blog:

“The product may utilize basic hard plastics (no multi-injections, no silicones), sheet metals (no castings or forgings), and basic composites (no carbon, kevlar, nomex, etc). They may not use complex circuit boards, custom power sources, or hazardous materials. The end product should cost no more than $150 MSRP, and fully assembled, it should measure at or smaller than 8×8x12″. Rapid prototyping machines and a team of modelers are standing by to make it all happen in 3D.”

Pretty fascinating stuff, if you ask me. There’s a whole lot more to the site and it’s structure than I could fit into this article, as well.

I’m sure there are plenty of other social communities out there that actually have some sort of worthwhile purpose (see: more than just a place to post poorly worded comments under badly taken photos), I just have yet to stumble across them. Regardless, I’m really into what Kluster is doing and have a good feeling that I may have found something with which I may actually be inspired to become actively involved in. If you’d like to become involved alongside me, sign up at Kluster.com and find me on the site through jimfooyoung@gmail.com.