Brand-new Bush-bashing site sells on eBay
Shoe-throwing game was created Monday, launched Tuesday, grew like crazy Wednesday, and was sold on eBay Thursday for nearly $8,000. (From Reuters)
The British entrepreneur behind an online game inviting people to throw footwear at President Bush sold the property on eBay four days after its creation, he said Friday.
Alex Tew, who made Internet history in 2006 when he made a million dollars selling pixels at a dollar each on Milliondollarhomepage.com, set up Sockandawe.com on Monday after an Iraqi journalist made headlines worldwide by pelting the visiting U.S. president with his footwear.
What he called a "stupid little flash game" started getting millions of hits, threatening to overload the servers for a new humor site that Tew is building.
"We've spent the last three days trying to keep the servers alive and we're meant to be working on our other main startup PopJam. So we whacked it on eBay," said Tew, who is in his mid-20s.
"It's really cool. From Monday concept, Tuesday launch, Wednesday growth, we've had a Thursday exit--so it's kind of a micro-Web start up if you like," said Tew, adding that the funds will go into his company.
The buyer was a British-based Internet media company and the price the site fetched on the online auction site was $7,818 (5,215 pounds), he said.
"It was just a bit of fun, a bit of an experiment," he said. "It's actually turned out to be a useful fundraising exercise for our start-up, which is good given the present economic circumstances."