ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, May 9, 1996 TAG: 9605090063
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: BUSINESS EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NEW YORK
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
BY POOLING THEIR KNOWLEDGE ON-LINE, computer users probably received more Disney contest-prize food than McDonald's planned to give away.
Bet the Hamburglar wishes he had a computer.
Over the past month, people hungry for the $1 million cash prize McDonald's was giving away in a Disney trivia contest used the Internet to find answers to questions such as ``In the Lion King, where is young Simba first presented to his future subjects?'' (Pride Rock)
The effort probably cost McDonald's more cheeseburgers, Cokes and apple pies than it expected to hand out.
There's no way to know, though, because the company didn't keep track of how much food was given away and wasn't aware of the on-line answers, spokeswoman Julie Cleary said. The chain stopped giving out the game cards last week as scheduled.
The contest's only $1 million prize winner, a Nebraska teen-ager, got the right answer about black-and-white Mickey Mouse cartoons without using the Internet. (It turns out the card was a sure winner because all the scratch-off answers were correct.)
Nonetheless, the discussion groups and Web sites devoted to the contest demonstrate how information can be pulled together quickly and shared on the Internet, possibly upsetting the balance of power connected to that information.
They also show the advantage of having the resources, such as owning a computer or visiting a library with one, for getting on-line, even though the payoff this time may just have been a free Quarter Pounder.
Henri Poole, president of Vivid Studios, a San Francisco firm that has created on-line contests for various companies, said it illustrates an even larger truth about the data network's effect on society.
``Those people in the wired world are working together to get ahead of the people who aren't,'' Poole said. ``What surprised us when we were doing our games was that people were so willing to share answers in the hope that someone in the collective was going to win a prize or gain some advantage over the people who weren't sharing.''
Each McDonald's Disney question card had several possible answers covered by a scratch-off adhesive. If the right answer was uncovered, the person won a prize.
Shortly after the contest began last month, answers started appearing on-line in an unorganized fashion that is typical of the big data network.
About a dozen Web sites, chiefly administered by college students, have sizable answer lists to the contest, for which prizes are being redeemed through May. The biggest has answers to nearly 3,800 of the 6,000 questions McDonald's used.
In addition, Internet discussion groups devoted to Disney movies were taken over by people seeking contest answers. And an electronic mailing shared daily by reference librarians, called ``Stumpers,'' was littered with requests for help in the contest.
Many people looked to public libraries for help.
The on-line buzz now is that McDonald's plans a similar trivia contest for the Summer Olympics, but Cleary said the company doesn't share information on upcoming promotions for competitive reasons.
LENGTH: Medium: 67 lines KEYWORDS: CYBERby CNB