FreeRice

Liku

<div class="IPBDescription">Learn and Give.</div>This site was featured on a local newscast:

<a href="http://www.freerice.com/index.php" target="_blank">http://www.freerice.com/index.php</a>

It's a UN site where people rack their brains to figure out definitions to obscure words they'll never use. For each correct question 20 grains of rice gets donated. It's semi-addicting, kinda fun and very strange I'm getting a lot of these words.

It also keeps record of your total donated rice, a good way of comparing e-penises online. My e-penis you ask? About 18380 grains of rice. I get a good chunk of the words wrong so my total level is about 30~, but I've made it to 37 some of those words I believe are fake.

La Chupacabra

I was always wondering what's the idea behind such websites... why do those sponsors actually bother about people playing that quiz? Why don't they simply pay the cash they are intending to spend anyway and ask UN to advertise the fact in the media? Any clues?
(apart from the ad of course, but single ad won't manage to advertise all of the brands / companies to a satisfying / profit-generating level)

money spent on making and maintaining this site is probably worth sh*tloads of rice...

but I admit that the game itself is kewl (anything is better than revising ;p)

TychoCelchuuu

My score generally hovers around 41-42 although I think I got to 47 once (this may not actually have happened). When I clicked on it today though it repeated a few words. It never used to do that.

remi

I think it only repeats words you get wrong.

Thansal

<!--quoteo(post=1675928:date=Apr 15 2008, 05:34 PM:name=La Chupacabra)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(La Chupacabra @ Apr 15 2008, 05:34 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1675928"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I was always wondering what's the idea behind such websites... why do those sponsors actually bother about people playing that quiz? Why don't they simply pay the cash they are intending to spend anyway and ask UN to advertise the fact in the media? Any clues?
(apart from the ad of course, but single ad won't manage to advertise all of the brands / companies to a satisfying / profit-generating level)

money spent on making and maintaining this site is probably worth sh*tloads of rice...

but I admit that the game itself is kewl (anything is better than revising ;p)<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
the assumption would be something along these lines:
total Add impression - total cost of rice +Tax Break (I am sure the donations like these are considered tax deductible) > cost of hosting web page.

remi

<!--quoteo(post=1675936:date=Apr 15 2008, 06:21 PM:name=Thansal)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Thansal @ Apr 15 2008, 06:21 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1675936"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->the assumption would be something along these lines:
total Add impression - total cost of rice +Tax Break (I am sure the donations like these are considered tax deductible) > cost of hosting web page.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This logic is especially true if the company doing the sponsoring isn't even the one managing the website. They get free good advertisement without needing to handle sending the rice or whatever.

So what Thansal said is part of the logic I think, but if some NPO is actually managing the website to make it easy for the sponsor to get this advertisement and to donate to a worthy cause, all the better.

Nil_IQ

So one time, at band camp, I wrote a script to play this thing for me and left it on for a couple of days in an attempt to solve world hunger. I came back and people were still hungry so I guess it didn't work. Unsuprisingly, the script did not have a good score either.