If I understand it, it's a pretty horrible idea. For a lot of reasons. But, the most obvious, is how easy it'll be for you to game it. When someone makes a bid, you can simply outbid them but not actually pay any money.
I see your concern, but we haven't done this yet - we have no reason to. There is no actual reward for being the "richest", we could care less as to who claims the title.
If we ever auto-outbid people, they would find out right away, and wouldn't return to the site.
Anonymous submissions are allowed... so it could be you hit the nail on the head and they are doing this right now (and simply publicly denying for obvious reasons).
On Firefox 7.0.1 on Windows 7, the bid overlay automatically comes up and blocks the leaderboard with no way of dimissing it. Works on Chrome 15.0.874.120, though ;)
Exactly. I mean I'm not bidding on it. But I wasn't one of the people who helped milliondollarhomepage.com reach its goal and then some either :) I'm just calling it like it is, a really good idea worth trying :)
If only the winner pays, it's just a silly game. But when the losers also pay, it becomes a genuinely abusive exploit of human irrationality which most people are not aware of. Please take it down.
And those businesses are accordingly regulated by society. But good luck trying to foster that winner-takes-all free-market world of yours. I'm sure it'll be a real blast.
Except none of those are good analogies to what's going on here, where people aren't actually bidding on something of monetary value. I find it hard to buy your argument that this is in any way unethical.
All these negative comments are a good thing. You've made something that polarizes people. I'd take that any day over something that makes people say "meh".
Similar to the "I am rich." app released on the app store so long ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Rich was art. I'm not sure if I think your site is imitation or art as well.
I don't mean to be critical, but your idea doesn't have any real point. It isn't selling a service or a product, which is a requirement of a startup company, especially in technology sectors. So I'm not saying it has no point, but what do you intend to do with the website? Where is it going?
This can be a good way to increase your Twitter account visibility and hope to gain some followers through this site.
Right now, the bids are low but if this idea sustainable or not needs to be seen. You can hope to make it big if businesses find it a good way to advertise and promote products and product launches.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 117 ms ] threadFrom what I could gather, this looked like "person-who-just-spent-their-fortune on the web". :)
If we ever auto-outbid people, they would find out right away, and wouldn't return to the site.
Also, how would people find out? You just need to "be smart" about it. Don't always use the same username, change how long you wait.
http://www.mediate.com/articles/noll1.cfm
http://www.heretical.com/pound/dollarl.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/mind-over-money.html
Of course who actually cares to bid?
This can be a good way to increase your Twitter account visibility and hope to gain some followers through this site.
Right now, the bids are low but if this idea sustainable or not needs to be seen. You can hope to make it big if businesses find it a good way to advertise and promote products and product launches.