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The “Million Dollar Homepage” as a Decaying Digital Artifact

lil.law.harvard.edu

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Re: The “Million Dollar Homepage” as a Decaying Digital Artifact

#11

Post by kurthr »

graphitezepp wrote: post #8
brosky117 wrote: post #4

I just heard about the "Million Dollar Homepage" for the first time last week. Would this idea (or one like it) work today? Making a million dollars for something so bizarre, fun, and straightforward sounds amazing. Can anyone reference other attempts at similar ideas?

It's just a random example of something silly going viral. Stuff like this definately could work today (potato salad kickstarter was a thing) but any individuals attempt probably wouldn't work, it mostly comes down to luck.

I agree, and it seems another more ironic meaning of, "even monkeys fall from trees"... see the center of the page.

I always wondered why he didn't allow changing the pixels/URLs and reselling them. Should have been easy to set up and an ongoing revenue stream.

Re: The “Million Dollar Homepage” as a Decaying Digital Artifact

#12

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

resf wrote: post #5

Decaying in more than one way. The JS files on milliondollarhomepage.com start with: /* FILE ARCHIVED ON 5:47:20 Aug 6, 2015 AND RETRIEVED FROM THE INTERNET ARCHIVE ON 20:45:17 Aug 24, 2015. JAVASCRIPT APPENDED BY WAYBACK MACHINE, COPYRIGHT INTERNET ARCHIVE. ALL OTHER CONTENT MAY ALSO BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT (17 U.S.C. SECTION 108(a)(3)). */ I guess someone didn't keep backups?

Oh, so that's why the Twitter follow button has archive.org as the referer!

Re: The “Million Dollar Homepage” as a Decaying Digital Artifact

#13

Post by codegladiator »

brosky117 wrote: post #4

I just heard about the "Million Dollar Homepage" for the first time last week. Would this idea (or one like it) work today? Making a million dollars for something so bizarre, fun, and straightforward sounds amazing. Can anyone reference other attempts at similar ideas?

Like "go to a VC with any idea in year 2016" ?

Re: The “Million Dollar Homepage” as a Decaying Digital Artifact

#16

Post by zappo2938 »

brosky117 wrote: post #4

I just heard about the "Million Dollar Homepage" for the first time last week. Would this idea (or one like it) work today? Making a million dollars for something so bizarre, fun, and straightforward sounds amazing. Can anyone reference other attempts at similar ideas?

There was a post on Hacker News several months ago to a site that posted the last five people who paid for advertising. The list made it to about $500 before the admins here shut it down.

Reddit in April did a twist on the limited pixel idea with https://reddit.com/r/place

Re: The “Million Dollar Homepage” as a Decaying Digital Artifact

#18

Post by cesarb »

brosky117 wrote: post #4

I just heard about the "Million Dollar Homepage" for the first time last week. Would this idea (or one like it) work today? Making a million dollars for something so bizarre, fun, and straightforward sounds amazing. Can anyone reference other attempts at similar ideas?

Something similar (for fun, not for money) would be Reddit's /r/place.

Re: The “Million Dollar Homepage” as a Decaying Digital Artifact

#19

Post by Dylan16807 »

fatjokes wrote: post #15

I didn't realize you bought the pixels permanently. How did the owner keep up with serving costs?

It's a million dollars. Even if it cost a thousand dollars a month to host, you could pay that with ~1% interest on the money.

And realistically it's something that after the initial craze cools, can run on quite cheap hosting.

Re: The “Million Dollar Homepage” as a Decaying Digital Artifact

#20

Post by nashashmi »

brosky117 wrote: post #4

I just heard about the "Million Dollar Homepage" for the first time last week. Would this idea (or one like it) work today? Making a million dollars for something so bizarre, fun, and straightforward sounds amazing. Can anyone reference other attempts at similar ideas?

The kid tried to do it again. It didn't work. The reason it worked the first time was people bought it out of curiosity then it went viral over traditional news media and then original purchasers reaped profits leading to further hype leading to further buying craze leading to further frenzy.

Eventually the last bit of 1000 pixels went for 37k.

If the kid had extended the page another million pixels, you could have measured the peak interest and the subsequent decline.

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