Back in the olden times (in 2005) a website was setup called the Million Dollar Homepage. A brainchild of student Alex Tew who wanted to raise some money for university. The concept was simple, get a webpage composed of a million pixels and sell them all for $1 each.

They were sold in 10 x 10 pixel blocks. Whoever bought the block could provide an image, logo, text, link etc. It was picked up by the BBC which helped its popularity http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wiltshire/4271694.stm… It was insanely popular and he ended up grossing over a million dollars from it.

The website is still active today http://milliondollarhomepage.com although many of the links are broken. The page itself is grotesque, but also a weird portal into what the internet looked like back in the day. Reminds me of all the popups and dodgy ads.

Considering this was back in the early days, the novelty factor alone was enough to pique interest and make it a viral hit. The return on investment for advertisers was probably next to nothing.

But they bought a piece of digital history – some real estate on the internet that is around today – outliving many of the advertisers. There were many copycat websites, but none of them replicated the success of the original.

And you’ve probably guessed, yes, I’m drawing the parallels between the million dollar homepage, web 3.0 and NFT’s. All of which promise you “ownership” on the web, and pixels that will go up in value.

I think, like the million dollar homepage, only those that got / get in right at the ground floor have any chance of some success. The rest will be relegated to a cyber museum.