Started by Lou Tremblay (@liminal_lou) ·
the Million Dollar Homepage is now a link rot museum
A student sold a 1000×1000 pixel grid at $1 a pixel in 2005 to pay for university. It worked. Then he dropped out.
4 sources · 26 min down the hole
How I got here
- Started with
- “million dollar homepage what happened”
- Ended at
- Link rot
The Trail
- “million dollar homepage what happened” (google.com)
- The Million Dollar Homepage (en.wikipedia.org)
- The Million Dollar Homepage - Own a piece of internet history! (milliondollarhomepage.com)
hovering over the blocks is like walking through a 2005 graveyard
- Link rot (en.wikipedia.org)
What I came away with
The final 1,000 pixels sold on eBay for $38,100, bringing the total to $1,037,100. By 2017, 547 of the 2,816 original links were dead and many others redirected elsewhere; by 2019 the BBC put it around 40%.
Keep going
- the guy who wrote the pop-up ad apologized for it · Lou Tremblay · 6 sources
- the Hampster Dance got about 800 visits in its first year and a half · Lou Tremblay · 6 sources
- Flash stopped on January 12, 2021, and people saved 160,000 games · Ayodele Bankole · 7 sources
- the first webcam was pointed at a coffee pot · Ayodele Bankole · 7 sources