How it works
Set a number. Share a link. Act only when the number is real.
Crowd is a free, anonymous tool for conditional collective action. An organiser sets a target number of people, a deadline and a plan. Anyone with the link can say “I'm in” without an account. If the target is reached before the deadline, the action is on. If not, it expires and nobody is committed to anything.
Why a threshold changes behaviour
Most group plans fail on ordering, not enthusiasm. Nobody wants to be the first to walk out, the first to book the villa, the first to cancel a subscription in protest. Each person is waiting to see whether the others will.
A conditional commitment breaks the deadlock. “I'm in if we reach 200” costs nothing to say and exposes nobody, because the promise only becomes real once 199 other people have made the same one. Economists call this an assurance contract. Kickstarter uses it for money. Crowd uses it for action.
The live counter does the rest. A public number that's climbing is a far better recruiter than a message saying “who's interested?”.
Step by step
- 1
Set the target: the number of people that makes the action worth doing. Anything from 2 to 100,000.
- 2
Write the action as one sentence: "if this many people say yes, then we will…" with the time and place.
- 3
Set the deadline (when the count must be reached) and the action time (when it happens). They can be different.
- 4
Share the link anywhere: a group chat, a forum, a poster with a QR code. There's nothing to install.
- 5
People tap "I'm in". Each join is anonymous and counted once per device. The counter on the page updates live.
- 6
If the target is reached before the deadline, the page shows Reached and the action is on. If not, it shows Ended and nobody is committed.
What the action page shows
Every action has one public page. It shows the plan, the target, the live count and a progress bar, the deadline, the time the action happens, and a status: Active, Reached or Ended. Visitors can tap “I'm in”, leave a yellow card (a concern) or a red card (an objection). Joiners see their own position in the count. Nothing else is shown, because nothing else is stored.
What stays private
Crowd never asks for a name, an email address or a phone number. Each device is given a random ID in a signed cookie so it can only be counted once. IP addresses are hashed with a secret salt for rate limiting and are never stored in the clear. There is no participant list to request, subpoena or leak.
The trade-off is that Crowd cannot verify anyone either. A count on Crowd is a count of devices that tapped yes, which in practice is a far more honest signal than a poll, but not proof of identity.
Limits
| Target | 2 to 100,000 people |
|---|---|
| Description | 4 to 240 characters |
| Deadline | Up to 30 days after creation |
| Action time | Up to 90 days after creation |
| Creating actions | 5 per hour per connection |
| Joining | One join, one yellow card and one red card per device per action |
| Cost | Free |
Questions
- What is Crowd, in one sentence?
- Crowd is a free web tool where an organiser sets a target number of people and a deadline, anyone with the link can commit anonymously, and the action only goes ahead if the target is reached in time.
- Is Crowd free?
- Yes. There is nothing to pay, no premium tier and no adverts on action pages.
- Do I need an account to create or join an action?
- No. Nobody on Crowd has an account. Creating an action gives you a link; joining is one tap on that link.
- Can anyone see who joined?
- No. Crowd does not collect names or email addresses, and there is no participant list for anyone, including the organiser. The page shows the count, the target, the deadline and the yellow and red card totals.
- How does Crowd stop one person joining many times?
- Each device gets a random ID in a signed, HttpOnly cookie, and joins are unique per device per action. On top of that, joins and creations are rate-limited per connection using a salted hash of the IP address. Raw IP addresses are never stored.
- What happens when the deadline passes?
- If the count reached the target, the action is marked Reached and stays that way. If it didn't, it's marked Ended, nobody is committed to anything, and the page is dropped from search engines but stays reachable by its link.
- Can I edit or delete an action after creating it?
- Not from the page: there are no accounts, so there's nothing to log in to. If you need an action removed, email [email protected] with the link.
- What are yellow and red cards?
- Anonymous signals anyone can leave alongside, or instead of, joining. Yellow means a concern (wrong day, wrong place), red means an objection. They don't affect whether the target is reached, but they let the organiser and the crowd see doubts before the day.
- Is this the same as an assurance contract?
- Essentially, yes. An assurance contract is a commitment that only binds if enough others also commit. Kickstarter applies the idea to money; Crowd applies it to turning up, walking out, cancelling, or any other action a group wants to take together.
- How is this different from a petition or a poll?
- A petition asks someone else to act. A poll measures opinion. A Crowd action is people committing to act themselves, conditionally, with a deadline. See the comparison page for a side-by-side.
Try it with a small number first
Set a target of five, share the link with a few friends and watch the counter fill. Then use it for the thing you actually want to happen.