The crowd could cure cancer
Every time you pause at your PC to answer the phone or read a magazine, you could be helping to solve some of the world’s biggest problems. How? By downloading the World Community Grid software, which deploys ordinary people’s idle computers to create a free, open-source lab for global researchers. It has already enabled research projects into cancer, the human genome, HIV, muscular dystrophy and clean energy. The software uses volunteers’ internet-connected computers to perform research calculations unobtrusively. Since IBM launched the $2m-a-year project in 2004, more than half a million people in 218 countries have volunteered some 1.5m laptops and desktops. The average PC would take more than 328,000 years to complete the grid’s calculations so far
Crowd hysteria leads to historic growth
Internet coupon start-up Groupon has become the fastest growing company in history, according to Forbes magazine, by harnessing the instincts of crowds. Groupon offers discounts on a product or service, ranging from sports car driving to laser fat removal. The deals appear in playfully written daily e-mails sent to 35 million subscribers around the world, crafted by writers with a background in stand-up comedy. The offers are only available for 24 hours, spurring the sort of one-off bargain frenzy that makes the January sales so popular. But the real twist is Groupon’s reliance on the crowd: consumers will only get the deal if it reaches a “tipping point” whereby a certain number of shoppers buy the same thing on the same day. Two years after its launch, Groupon’s revenues exceeded $500m in 2010. It is transforming the way companies snag sales.
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