Distributed computing projects could double participation with referral credit stats!
Wednesday, October 31st, 20071. Distributed computing is worth billions of dollars
Every day people like you and I install a tiny program on our computers, and the power of the internet connects us all together to create a computing machine worth hundreds of millions of dollars. http://top500.org/ shows the ranking of the most powerful super computers in the world.
Just Folding@home is 4 times stronger than the strongest super computer known to man. The IBM BlueGene/L system has 280.6 teraflops of processing power. As you can see here Folding@home has 1190. That’s 4 times more processing power. Hence, folding@home’s processing power is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, dontated by every day people like you and I!
If you include other distributed projects, especially ones that run on BOINC WCG’s HPF2 project being my favorite, it’s much, much more than 4 times more powerful. This is interesting graph: Boinc Stats If you’re not already donating your idle computer time, please download the client, it’s only 7 megs.
2. Distibuted computing is growing fast
These distributed computing initiatives have little to 0 marketing budget, and have grown to such massive power for a few good reasons. 1. It’s a good cause. 2. It’s competitive, it shows a face to how generous you are and how strong your computer is. 3. People can join teams adding comraderie and more good spirits to the achievement and competition.
3. It can grow faster!
I say that a 4th element should be added to the mix! Teams, real time stats, easy to place stats notices like the one you see in the bottom right corner of this page, make people what to participate more. If they’re on a team it makes them want to bring friends on their team. ADD GENEAOLOGY!
If you allow users to indicate who referred them to the program, normal folks who may not have a computer could have points too, as they may have many friends that do. People that have lots of influence on the internet (popular bloggers, website owners, companies…), would have even more of a reason to tell their friends and/or customers about distributed computing because they’d get well deserved recognition for it.
Imagine what the family tree of referrals to distributed computing projects would look like today, if it existed. Important people who spread the word and added massive value to the projects would get the recognition they deserved.
Referal programs work amazing well (too well often) in MLM programs. Affiliate programs such as amazon.com, and thousands others on cj.com, linkshare.com… Disributed computing is an IDEAL cantidiate for the same great idea that works in mlm, and on the internet. It’s the next logical step in stats that make people enjoy donating their computers idle time even more.
