If you can capture enough people’s attention, you can profit from it, whether it be from an admission fee or from advertising, or even asking for donations.
The original Million Dollar Homepage from 2005 wasn’t just ambitious - it was absurd. One pixel for one dollar? A website with an oddly specific title and purpose? The goal of a million dollars? The novelty of it all quickly captured the attention of people, and soon, the press. In under a year, every single one of those outrageously expensive ad slots were sold, and Alex Tew - just a student at the time - walked away a millionaire.
Hundreds of spectators decided they weren’t going to miss out on an opportunity to make a bunch of money fast and easy. So-called “pixel ad” websites began popping up everywhere. They would change a few things up, in an attempt to recreate the novelty which drove the original to success. One such website called itself the ten-thousand dollar homepage. Another tried to sell a single pixel for a million dollars. None were successful.
The idea of permanently selling previously worthless ad-space at a high price for a high profit had already been done. Despite their efforts, these copy-cat websites were not original enough and did not capture people’s attention.
Is the idea of a bunch of 3D rendered rectangles enough to capture people’s attention? I don’t think so.
The “Million Dollar Metropolis” is not even close to a sequel. It’s the latest in a long series of failed get-rich-quick schemes.
And as long as I’ve captured your attention with this comment, consider leaving a donation with the link in my bio.
Cool homage to the original, but I think not displaying the full city upon first load (and using fog to obscure out-of-view parts) diminishes the appeal to potential advertisers.
Who would want to buy a building out in the corner? Maybe the starting location should be randomized, at least.
First rule of real estate: location location location.
Although for that to make sense, each building should be tokenized with an auction-backed tradable token so people could speculate on real estate how they see fit (should it still be called real estate?)
Bonus points if you geocode the entry location based on IP.
Or we could, you know, spend our efforts not building an asinine virtual advertising pissing field.
Bidding for the prime location would be an interesting location; anyone bumped off the first spot would move to the second, etc moving down until (if it takes off) what was once the prime location is out to the edge somewhere.
Of course, you'd have to re-evaluate what the prime spot is as well based on views.
And the buildings are all the same. They could be part of the message. If I'm a customer-focused business, let me buy a house in the suburb instead of a skyscraper.
To be fair, I think the original also had that issue (central/eye-level "real estate" was more desirable), although you're right that it was at least visible.
I tried to zoom out immediately and it felt constraining that it kept reverting to a zoom level. Let me zoom to the limits! Maybe then I'll buy a skyscraper "over there."
"I wish more websites would design with the disabled in mind. Sometimes 'features' actually are impediments to those with low vision, e.g. blocking screen readers, the ability to zoom in closely, etc."
but this version sounds not so great either (who cares what you wish?). Maybe something like "I might have bought a building if the site didn't break basic browser features like zoom,..."
If it's any comfort, the EU accessibility directive might make things a little bit better. Where I work (a Danish university) developers are scrambling to make sure that every website is either made accessible in 2020 or marked as exempt (because it's old and unmaintained). At my old job no one gave a crap about accessibility, but I do think the directive will make it a much bigger deal in the future.
Obviously, this website is not part of the European public sector, but forcing so many European Web developers to research and implement accessible websites must have some spillover effects over time.
The original million dollar home page was motivated by advertisers wanting SEO benefits. It was picked up by major media, so those pixels had value in addition to the SEO benefits. This WebGL version doesn't have that value. I think it's a scam but people can make their own opinions.
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>[...] Broadly speaking, there are none but corn-pone opinions. And broadly speaking, corn-pone stands for self-approval. Self-approval is acquired mainly from the approval of other people. The result is conformity. Sometimes conformity has a sordid business interest -- the bread-and-butter interest -- but not in most cases, I think. I think that in the majority of cases it is unconscious and not calculated; that it is born of the human being's natural yearning to stand well with his fellows and have their inspiring approval and praise -- a yearning which is commonly so strong and so insistent that it cannot be effectually resisted, and must have its way. A political emergency brings out the corn-pone opinion in fine force in its two chief varieties -- the pocketbook variety, which has its origin in self-interest, and the bigger variety, the sentimental variety -- the one which can't bear to be outside the pale; can't bear to be in disfavor; can't endure the averted face and the cold shoulder; wants to stand well with his friends, wants to be smiled upon, wants to be welcome, wants to hear the precious words, "He's on the right track!" Uttered, perhaps by an ass, but still an ass of high degree, an ass whose approval is gold and diamonds to a smaller ass, and confers glory and honor and happiness, and membership in the herd. For these gauds many a man will dump his life-long principles into the street, and his conscience along with them. We have seen it happen. In some millions of instances. [...]
I encouraged someone I knew who ran a Web hosting company to buy a big spot (the "FREE HOSTING" banner in the top half) once I saw the initial PR blowing up and this was why they made the order. Different times nowadays! This is a neat project, but I'm not sure I could see something like this sweeping across mass media like MDH did.
The original wasn't really a scam either. The about page isn't live anymore (sure it's cached somewhere), but if I remember the story, the guy was trying to fund college/ university and he set this up a bit on a whim hoping to get a few bucks out of it. It took off after a few initial sales by friends and family.
This "sequel" bears no similarities to the original in intent.
As a marketer, I can't imagine that there is a ton of long term value here. But it seems like that's baked in because it's a one time payment, and the prices are very reasonable.
There's also just enough customization options that I am already thinking of clever ways I could try to stand out.
As others have mentioned, though, the big benefit of the first million-dollar homepage was the SEO value - along with the fact that for a few hundred bucks, you could have a bold ad that caught someone's eye amidst the chaos (FREE HOSTING comes to mind). The novelty of the project sold it to mass-market PR, which then sold it to the public, who then shared it with their friends.
As pretty as this project is, I think there's a lot less novelty here.
The novelty here is more WebGL, as well as the "Hey, someone's doing this again." WebGL implementation will attract the attention of a select few people; the "here we go again" will likely also capture a few clicks, but none like the first time around. The story just isn't as good for mass-media to run with.
So while my right brain starts to go through 'how can I work with this?', my left brain chimes in with 'I can get a whole lot more ROI from $2k worth of Facebook ads this time around.'
Still a cool idea and very pretty to look at, though. If you get in early (so you can stand out), it might be a good buy.
This is cool but you may need better discoverability.
The original million dollar webpage had the entire block of 1million pixels fit within a standard resolution browser window. Users could mouse over every pixel on it to see what each was without scrolling around on the page.
That site inspired someone to create the Million Dollar Wall, which scrolled sideways for like a mile, and was trying to sell ads on it. But it didn't work b/c scrolling is not fun or interesting.
You might have a similar challenge with this site.
That’s possible too. My evidence is only anecdotal, but when I tried the MDH I moused over almost every pixel to see who had bought it. It was quick and easy, no friction. But when I tried the MDW I scrolled for a few seconds, then got tired of it and lost interest. The wall went on forever, but I cbf to scroll through it all.
This calls to mind the concept of The Street in Neal Stevenson's Snowcrash:
"That's why the damn place is so overdeveloped. Put in a sign or a building on the Street and the hundred million richest, hippest, best-connected people on earth will see it every day of their lives."
Put in a sign or a building on the Street and the hundred million richest, hippest, best-connected people on earth will see it every day of their lives.
This happens in real life.
AT&T, Verizon, Nokia, Garmin, and other brands put up flashy "flagship" stores on the Magnificent Mile in Chicago knowing there's no way they can ever sell enough gadgets to pay the rent. Those are nothing more than three dimensional billboards for the brand in a district where billboards are prohibited. It's not even a secret.
If half of what people say about the benefits of meditation are true then paying for a good curated set of guided meditations would probably be a pretty easy decision for some people.
What I find interesting is that there's a handful of small pixel chunks on their that amount to something like "Paid" or "Reserved", so they don't have valid URLs at all. Feel like those folks missed out on tons of eyeballs a decade back.
Also wonder if there's any study on ongoing advertising impact on these links. For example, a number of links on their don't resolve anymore - are those domains worth anything more than a usual registar price?
After 15 years the original still shows up in a modern browser more or less exactly as it did back then. I wonder if this WebGL/javascript heavy thing will even load in 5 years.
Some advertising is... effective (in that it effectively beats the existence of your product into the unwilling consumer's brain meat). But a lot of money still gets sunk into popup ads and print media, most people don't even see either of those anymore. You're better off buying google ad-words targeted at furry communities.
I think there's a difference between seeing an ad on a billboard and ignoring it vs. an ad on a site that's just one big advertisement. Most people will not visit a site that exists purely for the purpose of advertising.
Precisely. The success that the original Million Dollar Homepage enjoyed was almost entirely because it was a novelty in a number of ways -- the World Wide Web was new to the public, web advertising was new, web pages with organically created content were new...
Nowadays, it takes a lot more to get that kind of attention. I don't think it'd be possible without some kind of groundbreaking new technology -- well beyond anything that's on display here.
> You're better off buying google ad-words targeted at furry communities.
Uh... funny you should mention that, actually. I'm a member of that community, and I've seen certain mainstream advertisers target that audience in some rather specific and intelligent ways. :)
That comment was only a bit facetious - doing well targeted advertisements toward those smaller or more insular internet communities can really pay off well.
It's not, in any way, useful. Advertising is the least productive thing we do as a species, it's just lying to get people to buy something they don't need in the first place, because if they needed it, they wouldn't need advertising.
I need food. I like pizza. I would not know that a new pizza place opened a few miles from home except that they sent a postcard to my house in the mail -- an ad. Now I buy pizza from them.
Much of the most effective advertising is honest and factual. For a discussion of this by one of the advertising greats, see the book "Ogilvy on Advertising." [0]
> it's just lying to get people to buy something they don't need in the first place, because if they needed it, they wouldn't need advertising.
"If I would have asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse."
In the real world, you definitely 100% need to get in front of people to convince them that your solution solves their problems. Or make them realize they have a problem in the first place.
Strongly disagree. If you have a crappy product, generally you won't be able to advertise effectively. People won't buy your product if it doesn't look useful, and even if you manage to trick some initial buyers, negative reviews and such will likely catch up to you.
On the other hand, if you create a great product but don't advertise at all, it can take a very long time to grow organically, since you don't have any initial users to share your product. Instead you can advertise to get that initial user base, and then your happy customers will help you to continue to grow. You could stop advertising at that point, but as long as your product is good you can probably grow even faster by continuing to market it to people.
Now sure, a lot of marketing is zero-sum. IE, Coke vs Pepsi and similar: ads whose purpose is to sway you between well-known competitors. But a lot of it does provide discovery for unknown products too.
And finally, most people expect it. I'm not exaggerating when I say at autotempest we get an order of magnitude more people complaining that we don't advertise enough than that we advertise too much. Often this will be new users who say something like, "This is great—wish I'd known about it years ago! You guys should do better marketing." Of course nothing would have stopped them from searching for a service like ours. We rank very highly on Google and such; but most people don't work that way.
None. Ideally someone would investigate the history of advertising and why it has become the multi-hundred billion dollar industry that it is. Ideally someone would investigate with curiosity: why do these businesses spend so much money on advertising? What benefits do they get from it? Given that it's such a significant industry, what would the economy look like in a world without advertising? They might also ask themselves with some degree of introspection, if they have ever been persuaded to purchase a product or service on account of some ad and been satisfied with said purchase.
It sounds like you aren't open at all to a perspective that challenges the efficacy of advertising, or is skeptical of the benefits of capitalism in general.
It sounds like you'd prefer these people don't make their views known in your presence.
Your comment indicated that you wanted to punish them by making the mistake of doing so.
iirc, some of the original advertisers got decentish click volume, particularly if they had bought multiple squares. Each one of them got 5x their investment in SEO because the PageRank of the original got so high with news pulbications linking to it.
I get the drive for the advertisers, but whats the point for the audience?
The original site had the novel status to gather attention, but for iterations on the idea what calls the consumer to come and see the ads?
Am I missing something?
Indeed, the original site had many copycats, most of them a 1:1 copy but with a different name, like the million (British) pound site, or the million cents one, but none of them had the novelty, which was the thing that got the original page news coverage and fame...
I personally think this is a pretty cool way to discover websites. I was browsing for a while, just looking at everyone's ads and clicking on a fair few of them.
best revision of MDHP is https://satoshis.place/ because it replaced the payment rails with lightning for instant gratification and lets you over wright stuff for a never ending income stream, and paid responses.
Performance is horrible on desktop though. Chrome renders slowly and edge doesn't render at all. It is fine for low resolutions, but scale it up to something like 1440p and it drops to ~6 frames per second. I sit on a desktop that can run modern games on high settings, I should be getting the full 144fps on this.. When I open the page I notice all 16 cores becomes fully loaded, so something on the page is cpu bound when it shouldn't have to be.
Very cool idea, love the "neo-Tokyo" vibe. My only issue would be: how do you deal with some ads being "hidden" behind others (given the isomorphic perspective)?
This is so cool! There’s loads of visual and technical novelty in this concept reboot for this time. It’s fun to zoom around and see what sort of people are advertising here. Worked well on my phone too. Hope you enjoy some success from it, well done!
this, like its predecessor, is a really interesting positive feedback loop. as more ads are purchased...
- the creator benefits from more people buying adds by getting money
- the advertisers benefit by the site's notoriety getting bigger and getting more visits as a result.
so i would think the rate of ad sales would look like some kind of exponential curve, so long as the price remains constant and the thing doesn't die off. does anyone know of any data on the original and how the sales worked? then again, it could just fill up all at once more or less, if it got everyone's attention. its kind of like a pyramid scheme that turns in to regular advertising if it succeeds.
I carefully avoid WebGL, because it's an over-the-top fingerprinting risk, even for different VMs on the same host.
So I'll never see this. And indeed, nobody who cares about privacy should ever risk it. But so it goes.
Edit: I'm not making this up. I actually tested. Multiple Debian family VMs on a given host have the same WebGL fingerprint. As do multiple Windows 7 VMs, multiple CentOS VMs, multiple MacOS VMs, etc.
But each group has a different WebGL fingerprint. And the same Debian VM has different WebGL fingerprints on different hosts. So I'm guessing that reflects the combination of physical graphics hardware and virtual graphics system.
That's a huge gotcha for people who compartmentalize in multiple VMs.
If someone cares to explain why that's not an issue, I'd love to see it.
The original Million Dollar Homepage from 2005 wasn’t just ambitious - it was absurd. One pixel for one dollar? A website with an oddly specific title and purpose? The goal of a million dollars? The novelty of it all quickly captured the attention of people, and soon, the press. In under a year, every single one of those outrageously expensive ad slots were sold, and Alex Tew - just a student at the time - walked away a millionaire.
Hundreds of spectators decided they weren’t going to miss out on an opportunity to make a bunch of money fast and easy. So-called “pixel ad” websites began popping up everywhere. They would change a few things up, in an attempt to recreate the novelty which drove the original to success. One such website called itself the ten-thousand dollar homepage. Another tried to sell a single pixel for a million dollars. None were successful.
The idea of permanently selling previously worthless ad-space at a high price for a high profit had already been done. Despite their efforts, these copy-cat websites were not original enough and did not capture people’s attention.
Is the idea of a bunch of 3D rendered rectangles enough to capture people’s attention? I don’t think so.
The “Million Dollar Metropolis” is not even close to a sequel. It’s the latest in a long series of failed get-rich-quick schemes.
And as long as I’ve captured your attention with this comment, consider leaving a donation with the link in my bio.