Getting that money would have freaked me out :)) making it impossible to do anything very productive under the glare of such media attention. If I were them her

Getting that money would have freaked me out :)) making it impossible to do anything very productive under the glare of such media attention. If I were them here is what I would do: 1. Get organised. 2. Code for 3 months and then stop for some time and keep 10,000$ for the effort. 3. Start an Americal Idol/The Apprentice like program to create actual code in phases. 4. Setup a Jury with 3 luminaries like Bruce Schneier as judges. 5. Opensource projects can participate for bounties to create various pieces of the jig saw puzzle. The entire contest would not involve any actual travel. Just a mob of coders checking into GitHub and Google code and so on. Their own code also gets to participate in the contest ;-). 6. Try get guys like Larry Page involved... LOT of people apart from the poor geek on the street want to see FB dead ;-). Note: These guys are celebrities now. They can easily become notorious. They are young. The best thing for them to do to themselves is to not get a bad name by blowing away the dough. If they keep the money away/use it as a catalyst for the FB killer, they will earn goodwill worth millions. They can "encash that goodwill" over time. With their skills+goodwill they can at a future date start a real startup through a program like YC maybe even in an entirely different domain, and earn fortunes. Their greatest asset right now is that a LOT people will now listen to them for a short time. If they manage to pull it off, even more people who matter will LISTEN to them. That would translate to a lot more than the millions they may raise right now. Wishing them luck. Hope they will be billionares some day. but not from donations, but from a real startup they create in either social networking or another area that really brings value to its customers. Sudarshan.P