It's worth at least $5 or even $10 dollars to me. That's effectively, "I'll buy you guys a pizza." (Or, here in NYC, a couple or three slices of pizza. But it's good pizza, damn it.) I'm not especially worried about whether or not this project conquers the world, or beats Facebook (which I could care less about one way or the other). The motivation here is just some interesting people with a lot of passion doing something they care about. Giving them a little money is like buying a beer for someone in a bar you just met who is telling a great story. It's not really goal oriented, just sociable. (And that's the difference between this and flushing money down the toilet.)

The larger result relies on the magic of lots and lots of individually small donations. A small amount of money like this doesn't hurt me at all, but a whole big lot of donations like this add up to $50,000 in a hurry apparently.