Alex Tew, the Uk entrepreneur most famous for creating the Million Dollar Home Page, has stumbled on another hit, almost by accident. Tew is currently working on PopJam, currently in stealth mode, but came up with a viral game to promote the site’s launch in the new year. The smartly named SockAndAwe lets you throw a shoe at President Bush, referring his recent escapade at a press conference in Iraq. However, the game itself is now proving to be a smash hit in its own right.
The site has now been featured on Reuters, AFP and many other mainstream sites.
Today the site got half a million unique users only two days after launch. Now Tew has put the game up for sale on eBay as a further promotion. Bidding starts at £100 GBP.
Of course, the eBay listing will simply add fuel to the PR fire. It’s certainly a novel way to raise financing for a startup.
Here is the information from the eBay listing:
SockandAwe.com has gone viral on a massive, global scale. Here are some visitor stats (at time of writing, 9:02pm UK time, 17th Dec)
- 1,161,825 Absolute Unique Visitors since launch on 15th Dec
- 1,680,465 Pageviews since launch on 15th Dec
- 823,906 Unique Visitors so far today alone (17th Dec)
- 9,533 sources and mediums of traffic (that’s a lot of inbound links!)Oh, and in the game itself: over 21 million virtual shoes have successfully hit president Bush’s face so far!
UPDATE: Entrepreneur Brendan McLoughlin has bought the game for £5215 on ebay.
(yet another misuse of the term viral in this context. what they mean is that it’s being shared. viral means that it necessitates being shared… moving on..)
so is there value in a fad site? for alex there is, and if he sells it to some sucker, even more. but for the person that purchases it? really? they’ll link it to their product/site, or co-brand it etc.. but traffic isn’t everything. what alex has done is very meta. he’s capitalising on the fact that it has traffic, not the traffic itself. that’s where his PR comes from. very clever, if accidental :p
my 2 cents anyway..
I’m one sucker who is bidding already I think it would be a great site to own. When was the last time you built something viral josh? This is so viral it makes the virus on BBC’s Survivor look positively benign! Who cares if it necessitates it.
Think about the next time a shoe gets thrown it’s a solid investment.
haha number one
http://tinyurl.com/4rdhmc
布什就是一个狗草的。。没心没肺。没良心。
send me shoes gives dollors
send me shoes gives petrol
it`s anew super game. N` I Wanna say It`s great. i hope Mr bush go to hell right now. fuckn` bush….
adi
ini adalah game paling menghibur…
game paing pantas bagi Presiden paling Hina di Dunia
I want to throw a pair at Bush so that a 20-year old Bahraini girl will offer to marry me.
Trust me – everybody who programs in any language is a monkey. Have you actually used any software lately? It all sucks rocks – even most of the OSS stuff. but you see for home http://www.liginmaclari.blogcu.com
There’s always SOMEONE who will capitalize on current events – look at Joe the plumber for instance…he just won’t go away..why does anyone care what the plumber thinks? He just continues to extend his 15 mins of fame
Way to go Brendan McLoughlin, good buy, and all the press the site has received, wont let the traffic die easily. Viral Marketing, and you got it at a great price. I was expecting the auction to go way up in the last few minutes. Like 5 Figures.
UPDATE: Entrepreneur Brendan McLoughlin has bought the game for £5215 on ebay.
呵呵，好玩， 好爽，喜欢玩
There’s an E-bay viral on the subject too:
http://www.buzzingbees.be/2008/12/18/bushs-gift-for-xmas/
funny game to throw and hit bush in his face http://www.farewellshoe.com
hhhhhhhhhhhh
you got your sorpreis
hhhhhhhhhhh