CLAIMING YOUR KLUSTER.COM / NAMETHIS.COM EARNINGS REQUIRES ACTION

Quirky, a social product development company, acquired kluster’s assets through a transaction that was completed on November 12th, 2009. Over the past 2 weeks we have worked to get our systems integrated and we are now ready to merge accounts.

CLAIMING YOUR FUNDS REQUIRES ACTION.

All funds must be claimed within 14 days. Funds not claimed within 14 days will be forfeited:

• Register at quirky.com or login if you are already a member.
• Navigate to http://www.quirky.com/balance_transfers/new once you are logged in.
• Enter your kluster/namethis login information.
• Click check balance.
• Click complete transfer.
• You’ll need to fill out & return quirky payee information forms prior to your withdrawal. You can download this form here.

Important notes:

• Quirky will not be enforcing the $200 withdrawal limit. You can withdraw your full earnings (as long as you have at least $75 in your account)
• Payments will be made by Check, or ACH for US based users. International users will be paid via check, however you may choose to pay a $30 dollar fee to have funds wired to your bank account. Quirky will not be using the Debit Card system.
• Once you click payout on quirky, you will be contacted via email to arrange payment. We are not asking for your bank information via our website but instead will get your information via email/phone.
• Payments will take up to 7 days to complete.
• Previously suspended accounts will not ported.
• Users with under $50 dollars of earnings will not be ported.
• Quirky intends to rebuild namethis and re-launch it. No timeline has been specified on this yet.

Questions regarding payments can now be directed to quirky’s payment customer service line at: payme [@] quirky.com , note that klusters support lines are now formally closed.

UPDATE 2:57PM:   QUIRKY REGISTRATION ISSUES RESOLVED. ALSO PLEASE NOTE SOME PEOPLE RECEIVED AN EMAIL MISSING AN IMPORTANT “S” THE CORRECT URL FOR BALANCE TRANSFERS IS: http://www.quirky.com/balance_transfers/new

Hi All,

We made it out alive.  Thank you to those of you who were patient.

Long story short, as of tuesday this week, Kluster has been acquired by Quirky Ventures, a wholly owned subsidiary of Quirky, Inc.   Late last week, Kluster’s investors reached an agreement with quirky’s investors to clean things up and move forward.  Everyone wins.

As for you… This means you’ll get paid your namethis loot through quirky.   Instructions on how to merge your legacy kluster account with your quirky will be sent out as soon as we figure all that out.   Shouldn’t be too long.   In the meantime, make sure you sign up for quirky- as this will be required for the payout.

Few things to note:

• Quirky will not be enforcing the $200 withdrawal limit.  You can withdraw your full earnings (as long as you have $75/ in your account)
• Payments will be made by Check, or ACH.  Quirky will not be using the Debit Card system.
• Previously suspended accounts will not ported
• Users with under $50 dollars of earnings will not be ported.
• Quirky intends to rebuild namethis and re-launch it.   No timeline has been specified on this yet.

To The Future,

Ben

I’ll keep this short and sweet-   Pending a bunch of legal stuff getting signed, sealed and delivered– We will deliver on our promises to you.  At that point a full and detailed explanations as to the ins-and outs of this entire process / problem will be unveiled.

I anticipate this being not to far away (probably under 2 weeks) but I just wanted to share the news.

B

Namethis is taking a break.

You can still log into your accounts and keep tabs on your winnings.  We anticipate we will have a plan, or at least an answer regarding payments very shortly.    We have a number of people who have expressed interest in helping to resolve the current issues, and we intend to explore those options in the current days and report back.

We really do hope that namethis will be back in action quite soon.   We know it has the potential to be stable, useful product which provides alternate sources of income to our community, as well as a killer product to our clients.

Until Then–  I’ll keep you posted.

Update 2pm EST:  There appears to be a bug when logging in to namethis for the first time, and then it goes away when you try the second time… we are fixing.  In the meantime you can go to kluster and hit the login to legacy acct button.

Update 2:15pm EST:  All set on the login issues…  By the way, the two namethis projects that remain active will go through completion, future projects will not be able to be created until we re-activate.

This post will be short and sweet.

We expect to have a decision in place by friday as to what our next steps will be for namethis.

The not-so-awesome-solution number one: we will shut the site down and keep peoples accounts active to allow them to withdraw their funds as funds become available through cash-flow from our enterprise business & customs.

The more-awesome-less-probable-number two: everything can continue as it was, and people will get their money.

The common theme, money earned… is money earned.  If we decide taking the site down is the best solution, you’ll still all be owed / processes will be put in place to get you your funds.

Respectfully,

Ben

As you may remember, Kluster’s main line of business is platform based.  Building tools and applications on top of our technology which enable communities large and small to interact and work together to solve problems and help aid in decision making processes.

While in recent months, much of the consumer (read: your) focus has been namethis…. privately we have been working with some of the largest brands in the world to build them collaborative applications on the kluster platform.  Unfortunlaty, we can’t speak to many of these projects… except for one exciting one.  We have spent the last four months building what is now known as kluster agency edition.   A Kluster like application which is private built and deployed for the enterprise.

Last month, agency edition was deployed to a few of the biggest agencies in the world.  Over 17,000 people and has been in constant daily use since.

It’s applications like these which is kluster’s main source of income  that make namethis possible.

Again, in an effort to keep you guys updated on how we expect to get your beloved namethis back in working order… it’s sales of robust enterprise applications such as KAE that makes it possible.

I’ll post more about KAE soon, as well as an update on card loads.   We’re in good shape.  Hang in there.

Dear Namethiser,

As you may have noticed, the ability to load your kluster debit card has been crippled over the past three weeks.

The issue, very simply: is a cash flow problem due to the financial state of our beloved startup, kluster.

This is a problem.

I’d like to apologize up front for one thing that I handled poorly. When card loads began to stop working, I anticipated the issue being an extremely temporary one… So I did not communicate as quickly as I should have.

Instead: I had hoped for there to be a a quick and triumphant return with card loads working, and the $200/mo. load limit being lifted.

Obviously, not what has happened. At least not yet.

As odd as it may sound given the context of this letter: Our team has never felt more confident in Kluster.

I’m a strong believer that in a startup: Problems force progress.

We were absolutely miserable and aimless a few months back, but the urgency of the situation has forced us to think differently about what we’re doing and where we can be.

In the past few weeks we’ve lined up some really amazing opportunities that will not just make card loads work again and load limits get lifted… but really take Kluster and our platform to an entirely new level.

So, here we are. Not where we need to be, but pounding pavement every day refusing to give up.

Each of you, as an individual member of a community who together have done incredible work over the past year together have a choice to make.

1. You can stop working on naming projects and wait to be notified of card loads working again.
2. You can continue working on namethis, and continue accumulating money into your account… know that card loads will work again soon, and your money will be waiting for you.
3. You can do what some have chosen to do, and post anti-namethis/kluster messages on projects, forcing potential buyers away from the brand.. causing lost revenue opportunities, thus making the card load issues that much harder for us to overcome.
4. Choose your own adventure.

Whatever you choose, thanks for being a part of namethis thru now, and we hope to see you again soon and get you loaded up with tons of cash.

Important notes:

-We will update you regularly on our progress. We do not have a date set yet as to when card loads will work again. It’s currently looking at a few more weeks.

-Kluster is not going out of business. We are at an inflection point here and we anticipate the next few months being extremely fruitful ones for us, as well as our community.

-The “awaiting judgement” issue of projects not being closed on a timely basis is an unrelated one… clients just have not been choosing winners in a timely fashion. We are going to improve the UI and send more notification emails to them to bug them.

-Quirky is a completely separate operating company. Separate team, separate bank accounts, etc. Please direct questions and concerns regarding card loads to the kluster team. Inquiries at quirky will not be answered.

-If you want to help: Stay positive and continue participating. That will have the single largest impact on getting us where we need to be.

Thank you for reading,
Ben

I’m proud to announce kluster + klusterlab’s latest creation…   www.quirky.com

The concept behind quirky has been a long time coming.

For those of you who have been around since kluster’s original launch back at TED in 2008, you’ll see that quirky brings our dream of being able to bring people’s product ideas out of heads and onto shelves.

We are committing to the unpossible…   bringing one brand new product from sketch to store every few days.

Technically, we are not going fully live for about a week or so… but we thought we’d let our “friends & family” in to get a head start… if you guys aren’t in that class that by now… after all we’ve been through…. not sure what to call you.

For being a faithful klusterfck reader… here’s a coupon code to use for a free product idea submission… this code will expire in 48 hours from time of this post.   coupon code:    FCKRDR

The above is the simple sentiment which kluster was founded upon….   being able to harness the collaborative power of a large group in order to get real stuff done & made.

Today, we’re excited to see the first product (that we know of) that went through the kluster platform for at least part of it’s development launch worldwide.

We launched Kluster about 13 months ago, and one of the first projects that went up there was the naming of an internet radio.    Countless people poured their names, and comments into the project and within just a few days we had collectively come to the consensus that “Livio” was where it was at.

This little project early on not only affirmed our belief in kluster’s platform and process, but also the power of you guys as a community.  (oh, and it may or may not have been the root of the idea for our beloved namethis.com)

Today, the Livio launches as the first and only internet radio box with dedicated support for Pandora– oh, and their sexy little thumbs up/thumbs down control.

Did I mention it’s beautiful?

Congratulations to Jake & the Livio Team on a remarkable job, and a huge thanks on behalf of the kluster world for letting us have a part.   maybe some of you want to buy one?

Anyhow, in the coming weeks we hope to have many other exciting stories to tell of a product or project going full circle through our platform.     That and— we intend to go back to our roots with a new lab project, dedicated to bringing peoples product ideas… you guessed it-  out of heads, and onto shelves.

Thats all for now… sound off in the comments if you know of other products/projects/companies that have taken the moniker that we bestowed upon it.

Well Done,

ben

Things you’ll see in May:

-A New Kluster.com

-An Elite namethis community

-Giant Butterflies

-Kluster Agency Edition

-Kluster desktop application

-My baby— A new labs project (see business week)

for now— shhhh…. let us work.

Oh, and a super exciting announcement & story of a stellar job done by all of you is coming tmrw am!

-ben