"Thank you all for supporting me to help keep the site ad-free forever. There will never be, you have my promise on this subject, ” wrote Avi Schiffmann on his Twitter account, on May 5. The 17-year-old high school student, originally from Seattle in Washington State in the United States, refused $ 7.3 million (8 million euros) for the purchase of his data aggregation site on the Covid- 19, with 700 million visitors, reports Ouest-France .
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As early as January, as the Covid-19 epidemic barely crossed the borders of Asia, Avi Schiffmann, computer enthusiast, began to collect all known data on the epidemic situation of the virus. The information listed for several months by the young American is based on data from WHO, local health services and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The site is presented in the form of an interactive map where are listed, by country, the numbers of proven cases as well as the mortality rate and other statistics updated every minute. Today, this platform is visited by 30 million people every day. An impressive traffic that has not failed to attract the appetite of investors and advertisers who want to take advantage of the massive audience to place advertising products.
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According to Ouest-France , one of the coveters even offered the young man up to eight million dollars to buy his site, information confirmed by the interested party on his Twitter page. The teenager estimates that he could have received close to $ 30 million if he had followed up on the other advertising proposals.
" The purpose of this site has always been to disseminate information around the world on the current pandemic, not to earn money, " he wrote on his account on May 9. “ I'm only 17, I don't need $ 8 million. I don't want to be a profiteer, ” he also justified himself to Business Insider .
