A food-linked word game put on the Internet a month ago has proved a runaway success and has already generated enough rice to feed 50,000 people, the United Nations World Food Program said Friday.
FreeRice offers participants multiple-choice definitions to the meaning of a word, with each correct click generating 10 grains of rice for the WFP. The brainchild of American online fund-raising pioneer John Breen, the Web site FreeRice.com relies on advertising revenue to underwrite its rice campaign.
"The site is a viral marketing success story with more than 1 billion grains of rice donated in just one month to help tackle hunger worldwide," said Josette Sheeran, executive director of the Rome-based WFP. On October 7, the day it was launched, just 830 grains of rice were donated. But the Internet community quickly caught on, and on November 8 alone 77 million grains were donated--equivalent to more than 7 million correct clicks.
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