Last Wednesday Om Malik celebrated a private Blog Reader Appreciation Day by giving away free links & codes to Joost, Babelgum and FON's free Fonera router. He clearly explained that the FON thing was only meant for USA citizens, and that the maximum number of routers to be distributed was 1,500.
Then things went out of hand. Proving GigaOM's authority in the blogosphere, and the blogosphere's power as a vehicle for a successful seeding campaign. First the article itself got more than 600 comments. Then Om's story was dugg over a 1,000 times.
More than 6,000 free Fonera routers were ordered so far - a little over 5,000 sets from the US, the rest from elsewhere.That's $ 180,000 worth of hardware plus a $ 60,000 shipping cost, as compared to the $ 45,000 (+ $ 15,000) budget that FON initially must have had in mind...
Today FON founder Martin Varsavsky gives us the whole story:
"Now, what can we do in a situation like this? Dissapoint Om´s readers and would
be FONeros? That would not be very cool. So what we decided to do is to allow
all the people who are not American and who asked for their free Foneras to get
one until now, 1145 GMT time, and extend the campaign in the USA until this
Sunday at midnight GMT time which is 7pm EST. Conclusion, from now on only US
residents can get free Foneras and this campaign to increase fonero density in
the States through GigaOM ends on Sunday at 7pm EST. To be precise at 7pm on
Sunday the link that is now open to Gigaom readers that allows them to save
$29.95 will stop working."
So, if you're living in the USA, and if you want a free Fonera worth $ 29.95, not even paying for shipping, you'd better NOW click here.
I've submitted the story above as a WTF on Technorati. You can vote for it here.
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