Now that's what I call viral

Digital whizz-kid and mate Alex Tew is better known to internet historians as the Million Dollar Homepage creator. At the age of 21, he paid his way through university by selling one million pixels of internet ad space for $1 each.

Three years later, and following the shoe throwing antics of Iraqi journalist Muntadar Al-Zaidi, Alex is once again making headlines of his own, this time almost by accident.

Alex is the creative behind Sockandawe.com - an online game which allows users to recreate Al-Zaidi’s antics during last Sunday’s press conference by throwing shoes at US president George Bush.

Alex was quick off the mark. Sock and Awe was live by Monday 15 December. Within 24 hours, five million shoes had hit Bush in the face, thrown by 250,000 unique users.

By the end of 16 December, another 110,000 people had found the site. The next day, news agency Reuters ran a story about the game on its front page . The technical team at Alex’s four-man start-up (still in stealth mode) PopJam.com recruited much-needed help from the social network for gamers Playfire.com as they struggled to keep it online.

By the end of 17 December, over one million unique users had thrown more than 18 million shoes at a ducking and diving Bush in the cartoon game.

That evening, Alex put Sockandawe.com up for sale on eBay . Just 24 hours later, it was sold to entrepreneur Brendan McLoughlin for £5215. It had been live for just four days, it had attracted more than 2.7 million visitors and more than 21 million shoes had been thrown.

The cash from the eBay sale will go some way to funding the launch of Alex’s eagerly awaited comedy site PopJam.com . But the PR generated by a simple idea, executed quickly and effectively is priceless.

Footnote: Today, British journalists including the Guardian’s Nick Davies sent a letter to the US Embassy in London calling for the release of Muntadar Al-Zaidi. The Iraqi journalist has been charged with “aggression against a president” which many suspect is a law made up on the spot in the post-occupation mayhem of Iraq. As a fellow journalist, I join the calls for the US to guarantee Al-Zaidi’s safety and secure his release.