Sparkfun Free Day

[gregariz]

There's a link on one of the comments to the statistics. Apparently people typed the captchas 6.5 million times during the contest? (around 6 hours?) of which 2000 people were successful so that means that on average people had to type about 3250 of them to win so you'd have to do around 9 per minute for the whole 6 hours to win. Must be some kind of record I'd imagine.

[Psi]

i started at around $140,000 and was going until the end, didn't win though.
But that's ok, i won in free day 2010.

[BravoV]

There's a link on one of the comments to the statistics. Apparently people typed the captchas 6.5 million times during the contest? (around 6 hours?) of which 2000 people were successful so that means that on average people had to type about 3250 of them to win so you'd have to do around 9 per minute for the whole 6 hours to win. Must be some kind of record I'd imagine.

When the luck is kicking in, any statistic will become meaningless. 

[mobbarley]

Crap... I knew I forgot something 

[AlphZeta]

I suspect that this is a really clever marketing campaign as I am sure it will significantly boost their web ranking due to the surge in traffic.

[benemorius]

I suspect that this is a really clever marketing campaign as I am sure it will significantly boost their web ranking due to the surge in traffic.

Yes, it's that plus a good load test on their servers. They did it once, then did it again the next year, and it seems to have turned in to a tradition now. They've been doing it for a few years and every time they improve their software efficiency, although last year I think they got it right so I'm not sure if there was as much left to improve  this time.

How did they handle the load this year? Last year you were lucky to get one page request through in five minutes for the first few hours, then they fixed what was likely a small oversight somewhere and it was all over in seconds.