Freerice

Freerice

URL	freerice.com
Commercial?	No
Type of site	click-to-donate site
Owner	United Nations World Food Program
Created by	John Breen
Current status	Active

Freerice is a website where users play various educational, multiple-choice games in order to fight world hunger. For every question the user answers correctly, 10 grains of rice are donated. The games include English vocabulary (the game the site began with), multiplication tables, pre-algebra, chemical symbols (basic or intermediate), English grammar, basic foreign language vocabulary for English speakers (French, German, Italian, and Spanish), geography (world capitals and country identification), and the identification of famous artwork.

History

The website went live on October 7, 2007 with 830 grains of rice donated on its first day. The second letter in its name was originally capitalized as "FreeRice."

On 20 November 2007, the WFP launched a campaign to "feed a child for Thanksgiving," encouraging internet users "to take time out from traditionally the busiest online shopping period of the year and help the hungry by playing phenomenally successful web-based vocab game, FreeRice."

For a brief while, the amount of rice donated per correct answer was increased to 20 grains, though this was reduced to 10 grains of rice per answer within a few months.

In March 2009 FreeRice website was donated to the UN World Food Programme.

Freerice 2.0 launch

In September 2010, the UN World Food Programme launched a new version of the game with social networking, groups, rankings and achievements. As part of the launch, the site dropped the second capitalization in its name, going from "FreeRice" to "Freerice."

Subjects

Although English vocabulary is the original and default subject, players may choose from different subjects, including mathematics, chemistry, geography, art, and foreign languages (French, Spanish, Italian, and German). The maximum level of difficulty varies between subjects.

Sustenance

In exchange for advertisements on the website, various sponsors donate the money necessary to pay for the rice and other costs to run Freerice. The donations are distributed by the United Nations's World Food Programme (WFP), starting with Bangladesh. Freerice's partner is the Berkman Centre for Internet & Society at Harvard University. The most common countries receiving rice are Bangladesh, Cambodia, Bhutan, Uganda, and Nepal, even though Freerice can travel all over the world (as of early 2008). By this time, the site's creator had given over US$213,000 to the WFP which encourages people to visit freerice.com.

Effectiveness

In its first six months of operation, Freerice donated over 42 billion grains of rice. One month after the inception of the viral marketing program, users had earned enough points for one billion grains of rice. The United Nation's World Food Programme stated that this amount could feed 50,000 people for one day, since it takes 400 grams or about 19,200 grains of rice to feed one adult for a day. Using this calculation, enough rice was donated in 2008 to feed over 6,000 people daily for each day of that year. Since its inception, as of October 15, 2010, Freerice players had earned sufficient rice to feed over 4.32 million people for one day.

Scripts

Since Freerice became well-known through Digg.com and other news sources, many programming-adept users created scripts to automatically play the game for them. The scripts operate far faster than humans alone and run for 24 hours a day. At first, the scripts got only ≈1/4 of the words correct by random chance. Eventually, these bots were adapted with automated online dictionary search, dictionary files, and word database dumps so the programs can choose the correct answers the first time more often. The word database dumps were created so when the incorrect answer was chosen, the bots would record the correct answer the next page would show. Thus, the bot would choose the correct answer whenever it happened upon the same words later. Due to the growing number of scripts used on Freerice, the number of rice donated has remarkably risen. With a delay of about 3 seconds between iterations, it is estimated that a script can feed about 8 people per day, if running 24/7. The idea was taken even further to create a multi-threaded bot which can run fifty or more browser instances at a time, enough to produce as much as 600,000 grains of rice per hour or to feed 720 people per day. One script with 1,000 threads was able to donate over 3,000,000 grains in just a few hours.

Donated rice comes from the advertisements from sponsors. Therefore, abuse of scripts could lead to catastrophe, as advertisers prefer that actual people view their advertisements. Knowing the existence of the bots, Freerice updated their FAQ explaining the potential damage of botting. Some bots have made changes to make sure they won't spoil the Freerice spirit.

Awards

Yahoo! Pick of the Year 2007 – Charity Category – Winner

Berkman Award to Freerice.com creator, John Breen. He was recognized with a Berkman Award on May 16, 2008 for creating Freerice.com. At the Harvard University's Berkman Centre for Internet & Society’s tenth anniversary gala dinner, recipients of the Berkman Awards were chosen for their outstanding contributions to the Internet’s impact on society over the past decade.

Monthly count

Month	Monthly grains of rice donated	Overall grains of rice donated
October 2007	537,163,380	537,163,380
November 2007	4,768,969,790	5,306,133,170
December 2007	6,948,988,060	12,255,121,230
January 2008	4,551,581,980	16,806,703,210
February 2008	3,893,361,180	20,700,064,390
March 2008	4,109,191,320	24,809,255,710
April 2008	5,614,647,060	30,423,902,770
May 2008	4,657,641,260	35,081,544,030
June 2008	3,043,677,360	38,125,221,390
July 2008	2,046,077,880	40,171,299,270
August 2008	1,918,976,960	42,090,276,230
September 2008	3,149,870,660	45,240,146,890
October 2008	3,739,408,120	48,979,555,010
November 2008	3,678,546,760	52,658,101,770
December 2008	3,539,642,160	56,197,743,930
January 2009	2,416,239,520	58,613,983,450
February 2009	1,663,509,530	60,277,492,980
March 2009	1,830,287,650	62,107,780,630
April 2009	1,478,963,720	63,586,744,350
May 2009	1,403,545,670	64,990,290,020
June 2009	929,906,500	65,920,196,520
July 2009	652,730,310	66,572,926,830
August 2009	787,320,460	67,360,247,290
September 2009	1,310,200,000	68,670,447,290
October 2009	1,611,699,490	70,282,146,780
November 2009	1,426,271,040	71,708,417,820
December 2009	1,262,727,060	72,971,144,880
January 2010	1,451,006,720	74,422,151,600
February 2010	1,281,469,630	75,703,621,230
March 2010	1,474,236,720	77,177,857,950
April 2010	1,257,599,650	78,435,457,600
May 2010	1,273,109,000 (+1,410)*	78,562,768,500 (+1,410)
June 2010	690,482,290 (+5,800)*	79,253,250,790 (+7,210)
July 2010	441,562,950 (+20,430)*	80,840,611,840 (+27,640)
August 2010	605,922,360 (+18,155,100)*	81,446,534,200 (+18,182,740)
September 2010	671,694,660 (+476,215,490)*	82,118,228,860 (+494,398,230)
October 2010	1,240,673,400	83,853,300,490
^* FreeRice and Freerice 2.0 kept separate totals prior to mid October 2010. The above, where noted, displays the amounts from the original followed in parenthesis by the amount from the 2.0 totals. Both totals have since been merged.

Nov 01, 2010 - 28,980,940

Nov 02, 2010 - 42,202,950

Nov 03, 2010 - 50,098,870

Nov 04, 2010 - 55,894,230

Nov 05, 2010, - 60,171,650

Total All Dates 83,816,611,610

Milestones

• October 7, 2007 – Freerice launches with 830 grains of rice donated on its first day
• November 10, 2007 – Freerice breaks the one-day 100,000,000-grain milestone with 122,377,240 donated grains
• November 28, 2007 – With continued sponsor support, Freerice doubles the number of grains donated for each correct definition from 10 to 20
• December 17, 2007 – Freerice breaks the one-day 300,000,000-grain milestone with 358,559,540 donated grains
• December 19, 2007 – 10 billion grains donated in total
• January 20, 2008 – 15 billion grains donated in total
• February 25, 2008 – 20 billion grains donated in total
• April 2, 2008 – 25 billion grains donated in total
• April 30, 2008 – 30 billion grains donated in total
• May 30, 2008 – 35 billion grains donated in total
• July 29, 2008 – 40 billion grains donated in total
• September 29, 2008 – 45 billion grains donated in total
• November 11, 2008 – 50 billion grains donated in total
• February, 2009 – 60 billion grains donated in total
• September 2009 – 70 billion grains donated in total
• June 2010 – 80 billion grains donated in total
• September 2010 – a new version of the game was launched with social networking and group functionality