[HN Gopher] My Little MillionDollarHomepage Garden
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My Little MillionDollarHomepage Garden
Author : matthieucan
Score : 128 points
Date : 2023-09-13 17:11 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (matthieu.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (matthieu.io)
| xyst wrote:
| The original internet billboard. I remember trying to replicate
| this when I was a kid on some static web host (geocities?)
| paulpauper wrote:
| million dollar homepages were sorta like something in-between
| beanie baby hype and crypto hype.
| nojs wrote:
| I'm really curious what the original owner of the domain thought
| the value of spending $200 on that little ad was. Like nobody is
| going to see it in the sea of other ads, and backlinks weren't a
| thing then. Why else would you buy it?
| giarc wrote:
| The Million Dollar Homepage was a big deal back then. I
| remember seeing it on the news a bunch. It likely got a ton of
| traffic and every website was trying to capitalize on the hype.
| petepete wrote:
| I used to work in the same group as the company in the top
| left, Cartridge Save. I think the million dollar home page
| got them quite a few clicks, but when confronted with all
| those ads it's hard to pick anything out even if it's
| prominent.
| petercooper wrote:
| I was involved in one of the logos on the MHP. It's not a very
| interesting story, but I'll share it anyway!
|
| Being permanently online, I saw MDH quite early on and when it
| began to get some initial press mentions, I figured it might go
| big. I hit up a friend/client of mine - Ben Neumann (RIP) - who
| was CEO of Globat, a hosting company. He was _hugely_ into
| guerilla marketing techniques (like paying a guy to have their
| logo as a tattoo or sneaking a Saddam Hussein themed ad into a
| popular computer magazine - a story in itself) so this was
| totally up his street and he immediately bought the large space
| now marked "FREE HOSTING" in the top middle.
|
| At the time, Globat used to pay quite juicy commissions to
| folks for hosting referrals (equivalent to about the whole
| first year of hosting fees) so even if he ended up with 50
| signups from it, it would have broken even.
| matthieucan wrote:
| Very interesting! I definitely clicked on that logo when
| exploring the page
| conradfr wrote:
| It's funny because when I went to check the page today it's
| the one that caught my eyes.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| It's not necessarily true that nobody would see your ad, part
| of the novelty was just mousing over little square to see what
| was there. This was also in the early days of the web when such
| things actually _were_ novel.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| I know exactly why. Back in the heyday of blogs, around 2010, I
| was SO fired up every day thinking today would be the day I'd
| strike it rich.
|
| I placed a very small ad featuring my blog's URL in the back
| pages of The New Yorker: it cost $500 or so.
|
| I figured you never know who might see it and visit.
|
| For perspective: at peak popularity back then I got about
| 10,000 visitors/15,000 page views DAILY.
|
| Nowadays I get an average of 500 page views daily.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| What impact did the ad have?
| bookofjoe wrote:
| None. Nada. Zero. Apart from making me $500 ($700 in
| today's $) poorer.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| So this discussion started me thinking about trying
| again, a simple classified ad like the one I placed in
| 2010, with just my blog's URL. Perhaps adding a QR code
| so peeps could easily have a look at my site with their
| phones.
|
| I checked to see how much such an ad would cost:
|
| >A simple 1-inch black-and-white classified style ad
| costs $6,066.
|
| Pass.
| runjake wrote:
| Because it was a major viral phenomenon back then and people
| liked to go look at it and see what they could find within.
| higgins wrote:
| Here's another (newer) one inspired by the great:
|
| https://24HourHomepage.com
| netsharc wrote:
| So, why does each second have a photo/link instead of most of
| them being empty other than for 925 of them?
|
| Good luck with the get $373,680 [1] richer scheme..
|
| Edit: aha, uploading and overwriting someone's content is free,
| to have an overwrite-lock one has to pay for it... Well I guess
| you were expecting a gold rush, but with so little uptake
| people seem to be thinking "why worry, chances are my link
| won't get overridden, and if it does happen I can just
| overwrite someone else's."
|
| [1] (864+1) x 864 / 2
| higgins wrote:
| It's free to publish to any second that wasn't published
| permanently. Buying a token lets you publish to a second
| permanently
| loveparade wrote:
| Please don't spam your own projects.
| fragmede wrote:
| Please do! In this case it's actually relevant, so I don't
| know why you're against it.
| notpushkin wrote:
| I think the problem is that while this project has its own
| twist and not a 1-to-1 clone of the MDHP, ultimately it's
| not some new or really interesting idea but rather just an
| attempt to make some money for the author.
| nvy wrote:
| >ultimately it's not some new or really interesting idea
| but rather just an attempt to make some money
|
| You just described 90% of startups
| notpushkin wrote:
| To be honest... yeah, maybe even more.
| tiborsaas wrote:
| It was quite trippy to watch the slideshow with a 120BPM house
| track :)
| higgins wrote:
| that sounds fun...link?
| waingake wrote:
| https://thelist.best/ please, thanks
| irtefa wrote:
| I love this kind of internet archaeology. It's crazy to think how
| many sites like this have just been sitting untouched for years.
| What else is out there?
| samsquire wrote:
| There's a nostalgia about the old web, where things were
| uplifting, good and positive.
| mhb wrote:
| https://zombo.com/
| isk517 wrote:
| It's impressive (or possibly sad) how well the joke has held
| up.
| nvy wrote:
| What's great about zombocom is that the only limitation is
| yourself.
| HeckFeck wrote:
| May I present Well Made Web, a gallery of inventive and
| distinguished websites: https://wmw.thran.uk
|
| One example is Internet Related Technologies which was
| reporting on new web standards during 1998-2001, last updated
| in 2001 and still online for all that time:
| https://wmw.thran.uk/dowdy/2.html#irt
|
| From IRT we have why use CSS, in case anyone still needs
| convinced: https://irt.org/articles/js135/
| matthieucan wrote:
| Ooh they even talk about DHTML! I had forgotten about that.
| greyKnight wrote:
| Take a look at the page source. Unfortunately they stopped
| updating their Twitter (X) in 2013.
| https://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/
| ThinkingGuy wrote:
| I used to check ITHell every day, the same way I read HN now.
| Then around 2001 it just sort of died, and has been frozen in
| time ever since.
|
| http://ithell.com/
| Borg3 wrote:
| You like archeology? Ok, have fun here...
|
| http://borg.uu3.net/ldetweil/
| inhumantsar wrote:
| > John Labovitz's e-zine-list - very well maintained,
| comprehensive list of cyberspatial "zines". Zines are the
| killer app of cyberspace, like the bible was for Gutenberg.
| matthieucan wrote:
| My favourite is http://perdu.com, from 1998. I've been using it
| with ping when testing internet connectivity for years
| varnaud wrote:
| Wow, I had completely forgot about this website. Thanks for
| sharing it, now I know where I am :)
| praisewhitey wrote:
| Mine is https://something.com/
| conradfr wrote:
| Come to think of it, MillionDollarHomepage could have offered
| "pixels owners" of dead businesses to resell their space while
| taking a cut.
| matthieucan wrote:
| True, but it's also nice to be able to see the unaltered
| billboard from back then!
| mchannon wrote:
| The business needn't be dead, and in fact the "lessee" could
| resell it at a higher price. The ORIGINAL NFT.
|
| But most lessee dead businesses would eventually lose track of
| their credentials, and in fact many of the people simply lost
| interest or even up and died. A system whereby a dead link or a
| parking page results in "property tax auctions" would have kept
| the ecosystem healthier by moving out the dead wood.
|
| Milliondollarapp (yes, I'm plugging a personal project, but for
| the sake of discussion) includes both of these approaches.
| Unfortunately it's been 90% complete for 7 years, and could
| really use a collaborator or someone with a more photogenic
| backstory to market it.
|
| What made Milliondollarhomepage a sensation was its founder was
| trying to raise money to go to university, and that soft spot
| helped him sell out in about a month. He caught lightning in a
| bottle and good on him, even if he never ended up going to
| university for that purpose.
| Vxbrown wrote:
| Commenting for ideas.
|
| What to do with that url?
| hoofhearted wrote:
| How many people here didn't realize that the dude who created the
| million dollar homepage went on to create the Calm app many years
| later?
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Tew
| [deleted]
| altdataseller wrote:
| I only realized it when I curiously went to
| billiondollarhomepage.com and it got redirected to calm.com
| PNewling wrote:
| I honestly thought you were making this up, but you are
| not...
|
| http://www.billiondollarhomepage.com/
| thomas8787 wrote:
| Brings back memories. I bought a copycat domain name in those
| days. A couple of months later someone reached out and bought it
| for like $100 IIRC.
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| Don't tell this reddit. Spez might bring back r/places with a
| twist..
| schlauerfox wrote:
| They already did that to distract from the ongoing API changes
| issues, away from april fools season. Not sure if it worked,
| the moderator issue seems to be back page news now that the
| people have either left or moved on leaving just a sort of
| netsplit to kbin and lemmy. https://redditmigration.com/
| weinzierl wrote:
| I had the same idea and ended up with 75pixels.com, but never did
| anything with it. Not really surprising that it is similar given
| that probably many domains there had "pixel" in it and probably
| we both tried to get an innocuous one.
|
| EDIT: Or was it 75pixels.net? I seem to own both.
| matthieucan wrote:
| Did you explore archives of the original website?
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(page generated 2023-09-14 23:02 UTC)