The Internet entrepreneur behind an online video game inviting users to throw footwear at President George W. Bush sold the property on eBay in just four days, he told Reuters on Friday.
Briton Alex Tew, who 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 by pelting the visiting U.S. President with his footwear.
What Tew called a "stupid little flash game" started getting millions of hits, threatening to overload the servers for a new humor site 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," he said.
"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.
The buyer was a British-based Internet media company and the price the site fetched on the online auction site was $7,818, 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."