Follow the Money: It's Online 

Over lunch one day, Hank Eskin decided to find out where the bills in his pocket had been before they reached him.

He founded Where's George, a Web site where users can enter bills and, sometimes, find out where they've been -- or where they go.

Story Tools

Today's Top 5 Stories

• Profiling System Takeoff Delayed
• VoIP: Here, There, Everywhere
• How Mac OS X Can Shed Its Skin
• Greenpeace: We're No Mongerers!
• A Royal Pain in the Internet

Nine months after launching the site, Eskin finds himself the reluctant guru of a community of more than 23,000 site addicts, some of whom have entered thousands of bills.

"I find the concept of seeing where my money goes fascinating," said Doug Younger, a 25-year-old programmer for MindSpring Enterprises who has entered more than 10,000 bills on the site. "I guess I have a little bit of a voyeur in me, and Where's George is a safe and fun way to fulfill that need."

"I just thought it would be fun to start the site," chuckled Eskin, a 34-year-old Bostonian database programmer who holds an MBA from the Wharton School of Business. "I don't know why some people are so obsessed by this. Someone sent a note saying, 'It's more addictive than crack.'"

Users of the site enter the denomination and serial numbers of individual bills, along with the zip code where the bill was obtained. If the serial number matches up with a previous entry, information on the bill's travels is displayed to both the former and new holder of the bill.

One user, who goes by the username Adam K, has entered over 40,000 bills -- the most by any individual user.

"All it took was seeing my first bill get a hit," said Adam K. "I started entering every bill I could get my hands on, and as the hits really started coming in, I set a goal to try for one hit in every state. I still have a few to go."

Story continued on Page 2 »