Decius wrote:
Apparently you can win some very, very big prizes playing this game. I have no idea how the economics of this work. Something doesn't feel quite right about a contest that is offering me a 50 million dollar prize and I don't have to pay to play it. You don't make that much money off of internet advertising. If someone can explain this please reply. (And be careful, nothing in the TOS prohibits these guys from selling the data they are collecting.)

Does advertiser supported TV and free search and email from Google give you creepy feelings? Probably not, but they raise tens of billions in advertising dollars. To raise $150 million for a $100 million flight around the Moon will take lots of ads. Our estimate is one million people playing daily for three hours a day for a year.

The Texas lottery runs by 1/3 of Texas adults paying $400-$500/year to play and raises $3.4 billion. Those same adults if they watch internet ads for three hours a day would conservatively generate $600-700 in ad revenue. That's 1100 hours at $0.60/hr. So a clever marketer can give away more dollars than the Texas lottery if he or she can crack the code for how to do it.

Still skeptical? If you don't want to give us your email address you don't have to and you can still play. At X Prize Cup, we met some kids on the other side of the digital divide and wanted to let them compete for a trip to space even if they have to go to the library to use a computer. No email verification required, unlike MemeStreams. And it's free. Nothing to lose but disbelief.

RE: Free Space Shot?!