ViralWorld

The Million Dollar Homepage

The archive has not found a surviving copy.

2005·Early YouTube·nostalgic

A web page of a million pixels, sold to advertisers at a dollar each in blocks of a hundred.

At a glanceThe facts

Spread in
2005
Began as
A web page
Where it started
milliondollarhomepage.com
Era
Early YouTube
Made by
Alex Tew, a student from Wiltshire
Origin
Not an upload originally
Available
Not held by ViralWorld

What this wasThe story

In August 2005 Alex Tew, a twenty-one-year-old from Wiltshire about to start university, put up a page consisting of a 1000 × 1000 pixel grid and sold the pixels at a dollar each in ten-by-ten blocks. Buyers supplied a tiny image and a link. The page filled up over five months into an unreadable mosaic of logos, and the last thousand pixels went on eBay for $38,100, taking the total past a million dollars.

Hundreds of copycat pixel pages followed and almost all failed, because the joke only worked once. During the closing auction the site was hit by a distributed denial-of-service attack and a ransom demand, and was offline for a week while the FBI and Wiltshire police investigated. Many of the links it sold are now dead, which has made the page an accidental map of the 2005 web.

Why it matteredWhat changed

A twenty-one-year-old who did not want a student loan sold every pixel in five months. Twelve years later more than a third of the links on it were dead or redirected.

TimelineIn order

  1. Made

    Tew launches the page.1

  2. Later

    By the end of the month he has taken 250,000 dollars.1

  3. Later

    All but the last thousand pixels are sold.1

  4. Later

    An attack takes the site offline for about a week, with a demand for 5,000 dollars to stop.1

  5. Record

    The last thousand pixels sell at auction for 38,100 dollars, making 1,037,100 in all.1

  6. Later

    A study finds 547 of the page’s 2,816 links dead and another 489 redirected.1

Why it is here: something the internet still knows by name · it got out of its own corner of the internet fast

This began as a web page, not as a video. Originally published on milliondollarhomepage.com.

Where it came fromWhat we know

There is no original upload to identify: this did not begin as one. There is no copy of it here either — what it was, when it appeared and what people called it is what this page can tell you.

Nothing here is claimed to be the first publication of this Moment, because the first publication was not an upload. This began as a web page, not as a video. Originally published on milliondollarhomepage.com.

Not established. This index only names a creator where the evidence supports it.

When
The sources below date the original to 2005-08-26. ViralWorld records this as a cited claim rather than an established publication date, because it holds no copy to check it against.

More from 2005You were there

SourcesWhat was read

  1. Wikipedia — The Million Dollar Homepage

Sources last read on . That date is about the history on this page. Whether the media still plays is checked separately and can change any day. How ViralWorld documents things

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