Twitter users could win part of Japanese billionaire's fortune
Zozotown CEO is giving away 1 billion yen through social media
Can money truly buy happiness? Turns out, a Japanese billionaire is willing to give away more than $9 million to test that theory.
Yusaku Maezawa, the founder of Japan’s largest retail website Zozotown and one of the country’s richest people, promised to give away a total of 1 billion yen ($935,000) to split among 1,000 Twitter users.
To earn a chunk of the fashion tycoon's fortune Twitter users just had one simple task: retweet his post. As of Tuesday, which was the deadline to repost the Maezawa's message, the post had garnered more than 4 million retweets.
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Maezawa conducted, what he calls a "social experiment," to see what impact this money could have on someone's personal life.
How the winners use the money of course, is up to them. However, the winners will be asked to answer questionnaires about the changes in their life, work and environment after receiving the hefty sum, according to an English translation of the billionaire's announcement.
Yusaku Maezawa, the chief executive of Zozo, which operates Japan's popular fashion shopping site Zozotown. (REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon)
According to reports, the billionaire will use a lottery system to determine the winner and contact them via direct message after the deadline.
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Maezawa, who is slated to be the first private passenger on a solo rocket trip around the moon with Elon Musk's SpaceX, pulled a similar stunt around the same time last year.
Maezawa promised 100 random Twitter users who reposted one of his messages a chance to win a share of 100 million yen, or about $925,000. His post on the social media platform had been retweeted more than 5.4 million times, making it the most reposted tweets of all time, Forbes reported.
In 2018, it was revealed that the 43-year-old would become the first SpaceX passenger to fly around the moon on the Big Falcon Rocket — a mission CEO Elon Musk expects will launch by 2023. The Japanese businessman will be among the first people to travel to the moon since the early 1970s.
Maezawa amassed his fortune through the popular shopping site Zozotown, and he now has an estimated worth of about $2 billion, according to Forbes.
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FOX Business' Brittany De Lea contributed to this report.