When You Wish Upon The Web
Be it World Peace, a debt-free life, or just a TOWIE-free world, we’d all give our right arm for a genie to pop up out of our Pinot and offer to grant us that one wish we pray for every night before going to sleep.
Well, genies don’t exist, so that’s that dream scuppered, but a new website is offering an interesting alternative. Belle About Town presents to you Crowdwish – The World’s First Global Wish List.
Crowdwish is an original new online service aiming to become the web’s ultimate wish list. On the site, users can choose up to ten wishes for anything they want – products, services, experiences, causes or advice. Anything. They can search the wishes already on the site and add their support to these existing wishes, or create their own new ones.
People can then gather support for their wishes through Facebook, Twitter or in any other way they choose; the more people that ‘me-too’ their hopes, the more likely they are to become resolved.
Every 24 hours the most popular wish on the site is taken on by a team of expert deal brokers, researchers and negotiators who then use the power of the combined demand to create results on behalf of that newly formed community.
That isn’t to say that wishes will be miraculously granted; more that the site works to make this aggregated demand as influential as it can be. This might involve creating discounts on popular products that have been selected, lobbying people who can help change something unfair, or it creating unique experiences available nowhere else. Users don’t have to take advantage of whatever is offered, only if they think it’s right for them; but all solutions are tailored, creative, imaginative and effective.
So far around sixty wishes have been ‘actioned’ – one a day since the site’s launch in January. These include:
- Making donations to charities such as the Red Cross, Action against Hunger, Save the Children and The Bill Clinton Foundation
- Providing assistance for people nervous about public speaking (from one of the architects of the successful London 2012 bid, no less)
- Creating anti-bullying stickers for school-children
- Tracking down the ‘perfect black skinny trousers’
- Helping children in Sudan
and, our personal favourite….
- Duping Katie Hopkins into signing her own gagging order
Crowdwish founder Bill Griffin says: “Whatever a person’s wishes may be and wherever they may be in the world, chances are there is someone else out there with the same wish. It’s a simple principle that many voices are louder than one, and the louder a voice the more likely it is to be heard. Crowdwish is a vehicle that makes that happen. People have really taken to the concept which is very cool”.
It’s gimmicky, yes, but fun. And it seems almost anything goes. The site has just six rules:
1. Don’t be lame. No one cares that you wish you could fly. You can’t and this site can’t help you.
2. Don’t be greedy. ‘I wish I had a free Rolex’ isn’t going to get traction.
3. Don’t be crude. They don’t need to hear about your Mila Kunis fantasies.
4. Don’t be vague. Try and be specific and imaginative at the same time.
5. Don’t be (too) selfish. The more a wish is shared, the more likely it is to come true.
6. Don’t be a dick – any form of behavior that breaks the law, or advocates doing so, won’t be tolerated.
And that’s it. It’s got to be worth a try. Hasn’t it…?
