[HN Gopher] "Sequel" to the million dollar homepage using WebGL
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"Sequel" to the million dollar homepage using WebGL
Author : jumprite
Score : 89 points
Date : 2020-04-13 20:26 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (milliondollarmetropolis.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (milliondollarmetropolis.com)
| acomjean wrote:
| for those that don't know.
|
| It was a advertising gimic page. You buy pixels (1$ per) and make
| anything you want, they put your link to those pixels.
|
| Don't click. (I clicked "guitars" and got a wrong OS notice, my
| adobe was out of date.. ).
|
| http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com
| bt3 wrote:
| What I find interesting is that there's a handful of small
| pixel chunks on their that amount to something like "Paid" or
| "Reserved", so they don't have valid URLs at all. Feel like
| those folks missed out on tons of eyeballs a decade back.
|
| Also wonder if there's any study on ongoing advertising impact
| on these links. For example, a number of links on their don't
| resolve anymore - are those domains worth anything more than a
| usual registar price?
| butz wrote:
| If anyone is wondering, yes, ad blocking works on this format
| too, with a custom rule. We are ready for future marketing
| shenanigans!
| frankzander wrote:
| Plz give us you money for nothing in return.
| kawfey wrote:
| Advertising is not nothing.
| duskwuff wrote:
| If an advertisement will be displayed in a location where no
| one is likely to encounter it, will advertisers really pay
| for it?
|
| (The answer is "probably not". But I'm mostly playing off the
| "if tree falls in a forest..." snowclone.)
| battery_cowboy wrote:
| It's not, in any way, useful. Advertising is the least
| productive thing we do as a species, it's just lying to get
| people to buy something they don't need in the first place,
| because if they needed it, they wouldn't need advertising.
| dangrossman wrote:
| I need food. I like pizza. I would not know that a new
| pizza place opened a few miles from home except that they
| sent a postcard to my house in the mail -- an ad. Now I buy
| pizza from them.
| legitster wrote:
| > it's just lying to get people to buy something they don't
| need in the first place, because if they needed it, they
| wouldn't need advertising.
|
| "If I would have asked my customers what they wanted, they
| would have said a faster horse."
|
| In the real world, you definitely 100% need to get in front
| of people to convince them that your solution solves their
| problems. Or make them realize they have a problem in the
| first place.
| komali2 wrote:
| To be fair, Henry Ford and his close friends driving cars
| around Detroit probably would have gotten enough
| attention on its own novel merit.
| projektfu wrote:
| They'd still have to put a sign on it saying "only $825".
| Otherwise why not buy a Rolls Royce?
| legitster wrote:
| Sure. Putting on demonstrations of your product would
| fall under a related branch of marketing.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| You've never owned a business and it's telling.
| komali2 wrote:
| What kind of response to this are you hoping for?
| chrisco255 wrote:
| None. Ideally someone would investigate the history of
| advertising and why it has become the multi-hundred
| billion dollar industry that it is. Ideally someone would
| investigate with curiosity: why do these businesses spend
| so much money on advertising? What benefits do they get
| from it? Given that it's such a significant industry,
| what would the economy look like in a world without
| advertising? They might also ask themselves with some
| degree of introspection, if they have ever been persuaded
| to purchase a product or service on account of some ad
| and been satisfied with said purchase.
| battery_cowboy wrote:
| Sounds like the words of a useless advertiser.
| goatherders wrote:
| " Advertising is the least productive thing we do as a
| species"
|
| LOL.
| lgessler wrote:
| I think this position is a little too extreme. Many ads fit
| your description, but some don't. In many parts of the
| United States, for instance, you simply need a car to live
| life, and car ads have the power to shape car buyers'
| choices in these areas. In a case like this, it's not true
| that they're buying "something they don't need in the first
| place".
| serf wrote:
| You'd probably like Bill Hicks' perspective on it.
|
| [0]: https://genius.com/Bill-hicks-on-advertisers-and-
| marketing-a...
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gd01vfKfr0
| WoodenChair wrote:
| > it's just lying to get people to buy something
|
| Much of the most effective advertising is honest and
| factual. For a discussion of this by one of the advertising
| greats, see the book "Ogilvy on Advertising." [0]
|
| [0] https://amzn.to/2wGGovm
| anticsapp wrote:
| iirc, some of the original advertisers got decentish click
| volume, particularly if they had bought multiple squares. Each
| one of them got 5x their investment in SEO because the PageRank
| of the original got so high with news pulbications linking to
| it.
| dmart wrote:
| Cool homage to the original, but I think not displaying the full
| city upon first load (and using fog to obscure out-of-view parts)
| diminishes the appeal to potential advertisers.
|
| Who would want to buy a building out in the corner? Maybe the
| starting location should be randomized, at least.
| floatrock wrote:
| First rule of real estate: location location location.
|
| Although for that to make sense, each building should be
| tokenized with an auction-backed tradable token so people could
| speculate on real estate how they see fit (should it still be
| called real estate?)
|
| Bonus points if you geocode the entry location based on IP.
|
| Or we could, you know, spend our efforts not building an
| asinine virtual advertising pissing field.
| StavrosK wrote:
| > should it still be called real estate?
|
| Fake estate.
| dvt wrote:
| To be fair, I think the original also had that issue
| (central/eye-level "real estate" was more desirable), although
| you're right that it was at _least_ visible.
| Nition wrote:
| And the buildings are all the same. They could be part of the
| message. If I'm a customer-focused business, let me buy a house
| in the suburb instead of a skyscraper.
| goldcd wrote:
| Well I just bagged billiondollarmetropolis.com - give me a shout
| if you think I should quit my job tomrrow.
| goldcd wrote:
| In all seriousness - I'm an idiot for spending $10 on it, but
| milliondollarmetropolis.com _not_ spending that $10...
| dvt wrote:
| Very cool idea, love the "neo-Tokyo" vibe. My only issue would
| be: how do you deal with some ads being "hidden" behind others
| (given the isomorphic perspective)?
| noir_lord wrote:
| You can rotate and move around with touch controls, works
| reasonably well on my current gen iPad mini
| nikisweeting wrote:
| Rotation isn't working on macOS + Chrome for me.
| dvt wrote:
| Ah, 'doh! I was just panning and trying to zoom in and out
| with the mouse wheel (didn't think to use my right mouse
| button).
| noir_lord wrote:
| Neat but would be cooler if you could fly around it in an air car
| or something.
| iblaine wrote:
| The original million dollar home page was motivated by
| advertisers wanting SEO benefits. It was picked up by major
| media, so those pixels had value in addition to the SEO benefits.
| This WebGL version doesn't have that value. I think it's a scam
| but people can make their own opinions.
| omarchowdhury wrote:
| You're calling it a scam as if this website is touting that
| they are offering the same SEO benefits of the original
| project. They aren't.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Also, times have changed a lot since then. This should be the
| Billion Dollar Progressive Responsive Adaptive Single-Page Web
| App.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| And it needs to be built with microservices and run on a
| multi-cloud Kubernetes installation with a service mesh.
| divbzero wrote:
| The original million dollar home page was just as much of a
| "scam" until the publicity made it worthwhile marketing. I
| would reserve judgment.
| bt3 wrote:
| The original wasn't really a scam either. The about page isn't
| live anymore (sure it's cached somewhere), but if I remember
| the story, the guy was trying to fund college/ university and
| he set this up a bit on a whim hoping to get a few bucks out of
| it. It took off after a few initial sales by friends and
| family.
|
| This "sequel" bears no similarities to the original in intent.
| samizdis wrote:
| This calls to mind the concept of The Street in Neal Stevenson's
| Snowcrash:
|
| _" That's why the damn place is so overdeveloped. Put in a sign
| or a building on the Street and the hundred million richest,
| hippest, best-connected people on earth will see it every day of
| their lives."_
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Put in a sign or a building on the Street and the hundred
| million richest, hippest, best-connected people on earth will
| see it every day of their lives._
|
| This happens in real life.
|
| AT&T, Verizon, Nokia, Garmin, and other brands put up flashy
| "flagship" stores on the Magnificent Mile in Chicago knowing
| there's no way they can ever sell enough gadgets to pay the
| rent. Those are nothing more than three dimensional billboards
| for the brand in a district where billboards are prohibited.
| It's not even a secret.
| komali2 wrote:
| I love that book, but I'll never visit this website again, so I
| wonder how apt the comparison is :P
| desireco42 wrote:
| This is beautiful. I love reimaginings of good ideas or bad, from
| the past. I think this is a very innovative way to approach this.
| OptionX wrote:
| I get the drive for the advertisers, but whats the point for the
| audience? The original site had the novel status to gather
| attention, but for iterations on the idea what calls the consumer
| to come and see the ads? Am I missing something?
| fastball wrote:
| I personally think this is a pretty cool way to discover
| websites. I was browsing for a while, just looking at
| everyone's ads and clicking on a fair few of them.
| netsharc wrote:
| Indeed, the original site had many copycats, most of them a 1:1
| copy but with a different name, like the million (British)
| pound site, or the million cents one, but none of them had the
| novelty, which was the thing that got the original page news
| coverage and fame...
| skavi wrote:
| The lighting is actually quite beautiful as you zoom in.
| throwaway0956 wrote:
| $100 a pop to advertise on a site nobody knows anything about?
| [deleted]
| pgt wrote:
| I tried to zoom out immediately and it felt constraining that it
| kept reverting to a zoom level. Let me zoom to the limits! Maybe
| then I'll buy a skyscraper "over there."
| the_cat_kittles wrote:
| this, like its predecessor, is a really interesting positive
| feedback loop. as more ads are purchased...
|
| - the creator benefits from more people buying adds by getting
| money
|
| - the advertisers benefit by the site's notoriety getting bigger
| and getting more visits as a result.
|
| so i would think the rate of ad sales would look like some kind
| of exponential curve, so long as the price remains constant and
| the thing doesn't die off. does anyone know of any data on the
| original and how the sales worked? then again, it could just fill
| up all at once more or less, if it got everyone's attention. its
| kind of like a pyramid scheme that turns in to regular
| advertising if it succeeds.
| pgt wrote:
| When I click on a building, I can't mousewheel to get out if it.
| Closed the tab immediately.
| ChikkaChiChi wrote:
| I would have it start totally zoomed out, then scale inward,
| Google Earth style.
|
| The ability to "walk down the street" and use keyboard controls
| would make this far more interesting as well.
|
| As it stands, it's a cool implementation, but I wouldn't expect
| it to catch on the same way as milliondollarhomepage did.
| reggieband wrote:
| Up next: 3d flappy bird
| OptionX wrote:
| We both know that 100 of those came out as soon as the original
| started making money!
| mirimir wrote:
| I carefully avoid WebGL, because it's an over-the-top
| fingerprinting risk, even for different VMs on the same host.
|
| So I'll never see this. And indeed, nobody who cares about
| privacy should ever risk it. But so it goes.
|
| Edit: I'm not making this up. I actually tested. Multiple Debian
| family VMs on a given host have the same WebGL fingerprint. As do
| multiple Windows 7 VMs, multiple CentOS VMs, multiple MacOS VMs,
| etc.
|
| But each group has a different WebGL fingerprint. And the same
| Debian VM has different WebGL fingerprints on different hosts. So
| I'm guessing that reflects the combination of physical graphics
| hardware and virtual graphics system.
|
| That's a huge gotcha for people who compartmentalize in multiple
| VMs.
|
| If someone cares to explain why that's not an issue, I'd love to
| see it.
| petters wrote:
| Works really well on mobile. Loads fast and navigation is easy.
| Good job!
| easymovet wrote:
| best revision of MDHP is https://satoshis.place/ because it
| replaced the payment rails with lightning for instant
| gratification and lets you over wright stuff for a never ending
| income stream, and paid responses.
| quadrature wrote:
| Still a little skeptical of the layout. but i've already found
| two cool sites that i wouldn't have known of before
|
| - https://polypane.app/
|
| - https://www.hackerpaper.com/
| legitster wrote:
| Pretty clever little gimmick.
|
| As a marketer, I can't imagine that there is a ton of long term
| value here. But it seems like that's baked in because it's a one
| time payment, and the prices are very reasonable.
|
| There's also just enough customization options that I am already
| thinking of clever ways I could try to stand out.
|
| This is like marketing catnip.
| schaefer wrote:
| gosh, that's pretty.
| ada1981 wrote:
| The creator of the original went on to build Calm.com which is
| got to be approaching a Billion in valuation.
| lintroller wrote:
| Time to rebuild it with WebGL
| echelon wrote:
| You weren't kidding:
|
| https://angel.co/company/calm
|
| This product doesn't make any sense to me, but major kudos on
| this guy delivering success after success.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| This completely misses the point of the original. That it's dead
| simple, trivial to navigate, easy to see big buys.
|
| This thing just chugs my phone and feels awful to interact with.
| friedman23 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the point of the original was to net the
| creator a million dollars.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| He would have had to charge a lot more if he wanted to net a
| million dollars. He grossed less then $1.1M.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Hah. Yes true. I guess I mean the goal of the implementation
| is to net a million dollars by _____.
| hazebooth wrote:
| This was actually an amazing experience on my phone, sucks you
| had that experience :(
| jhowell wrote:
| I wish it were my implementation.
| onion2k wrote:
| The performance on mobile is great. Safe to assume there's some
| three.js in there. r3f as well?
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(page generated 2020-04-13 23:00 UTC)