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Webservice Helps Launch Cause-Based Crowd-Funded Billboard in L.A.

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Billboards can help bring authorities info and leads about suspects like the serial killer known as the Grim Sleeper, or the Bryan Stow beating perps, and now a new webservice is available to help people with a cause find crowd-sourced funding to get their message out.

Likened to similar platforms like Kickstarter by MediaBistroLA, EpicStep is the source of a billboard set to go up in Los Angeles on Monday. The mission is to rouse the community in the vicinity of La Cienega Boulevard and Olympic Boulevard, where the billboard will be erected, to help the effort find Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who has been held in captivity by Hamas for five years, says the Jewish Journal.

The Journal explains how the service works:

Through Epicstep.com, billboards go up for one month at a time. Epicstep allows anybody to create billboards around any campaign idea or cause. Once a user has created a campaign on the website, the site gives he/she the price and the location of where the billboard is going to be, and then that person uses their website to collect donations—known as “crowdfunding.”

The man behind the Gilad Shalit billboard is Gal Sitty, 28, of Studio City. He first used the site to fund a billboard for the cause in New York, and hopes the L.A. one will meet with the same success.

Inspired? What cause would you like to see promoted on a crowd-funded billboard?

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