One Red Paperclip

[sir_hanzolot]

I've told some of you guys about this story before. A guy set up a website, http://oneredpaperclip.blogspot.com/, and started out with a paperclip. The idea is that he would trade this paperclip for something slightly better. For instance, someone might give him a teddybear for this paperclip. For the teddybear, someone might give him a free

Comments

[rykirk]

Pretty ridiculous. But clearly only worked because of the way he set himself up as celebrity. No normal person would have traded a teddy bear to a random guy for a red paperclip. They only would have done it because they thought his site and idea were kind of neat. It would have been more realistic and interesting if he just tried to do the trades with random people on the street without having any website or pitch or anything, then posting it all after he was done.

[sir_hanzolot]

And uh, also, good luck getting the word out to millions and millions of people by asking to trade with like a few hundred people a day. I just don't think it'd work quite the same.