MillionDollarCu.be: can lightning strike twice?

Stephen Withers
Friday, 22 August 2008 12:25

Business IT - Networking

Perhaps you remember UK student Alex Tew and his million-dollar home page? It triggered a number of copycats back in 2005 and 2006, but none that we've seen have come within coo-ee of matching the original's success. But someone thinks it's time to take another shot.

The basic idea is to present a page containing a grid of one million pixels, and charge advertisers $1 per pixel. So an ad measuring 10 by 20 pixels could cost $200. Clicking on any particular spot on the grid takes the visitor to the corresponding advertiser's site.

The trick for advertisers is to design a compact image that will attract attention.

While Tew did sell each of his million pixels within a matter of months, a fair proportion of the space was purchased by businesses involved in the seedier side of the web -  pharmaceuticals, get rich quick, gambling and so on - as well as other pixel-advertising sites.

Digging around for imitators reveals a lot of empty pixels.

Anyway, Robert Black, an Australian graphic designer, has resurrected the idea with a new twist: the Million Dollar Cu.be.

As Black points out, a million is such a large number that you can't visualise it. But a cube with sizes measuring 100 units is far more manageable. And what's 100 times 100 times 100? One million.

And being a designer, Black's site has more going for it than most of Tew's imitators had.

So how's the project progressing? Find out on page two.