In the offline world, the closing of, say, a local newspaper is often widely reported. The Million Dollar Homepage shows that the decay of this early period of the internet is almost invisible.
Many of the others now point to entirely new domains, their original URL sold to new owners. Some 40% of the links on the Million Pixel Homepage now link to dead sites. Fifteen years may not seem a long time, but in terms of the internet it is like a geological age. But the homepage he created has also become something else: a living museum to an earlier internet era. Tew, who now runs the meditation and mindfulness app Calm, indeed became a millionaire. The site still has several thousand viewers every day it has probably been a very good investment. Many of the customers – which included the likes of the UK’s The Times newspaper, travel service, online portal Yahoo! and rock duo Tenacious D – have had 15 years of advertising off that one-off payment. The Million Dollar Homepage is still online, nearly a decade and a half after it was created.
In January 2006, the last 1,000 pixels were sold at auction for $38,100 (£21,500) Tew had indeed made his million. The invented language that thrives onlineĪfter little more than a month, thanks to word-of-mouth and ever-increasing media attention, Tew’s homepage had raised more than $250,000 (£140,000).Could Estonia be the first digital country?.Advertisers bought pixels and provided a link, tiny image and a short amount of text for when the cursor hovered over their image. The Million Dollar Homepage launched on 26 August 2005, after Tew had spent the grand sum of 50 euros on registering the domain and setting up the hosting. When the millionth pixel was sold, Tew would be a millionaire. Once you bought them they were yours forever. The site’s model was almost obscenely simple: on it was a million pixels of ad space, the pixels available to buy in blocks of 100 at $1 a pixel. Tew set up a website called the Million Dollar Homepage. Twenty minutes later he had what he thought was the answer. So he scribbled on a pad: “How to become a millionaire.” The 20-year-old was playing around with ideas to pay for a looming three-year business degree Tew was already worrying that the overdraft he had would mushroom. In 2005, student Alex Tew had a million-dollar brainwave.
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