Our traffic rank at Alexa got updated again, and we reached the top 37,000 sites on the internet today!




We also said Bonjour to our first French profile this week, and even got a mention on the The Times website technology section, which was pretty exciting.

Thanks to everyone who is spreading the word - please keep it up!

To better distinguish between US profiles and UK profiles, I have changed the colour associated with the UK. This is because with over 1/3 of internet users coming from these countries, the homepage needed some more variation. If you want to see more colours on the site - then tell your friends in other countries!

First Spanish profile added yesterday - viva espana!

Saw a fascinating programme on BBC2 this evening called Meltdown, in which Arctic scientific expedition organiser Paul Rose goes on a quest to find out whether global warming is a man made problem, or part of the natural climate cycle.

Using the same distributed platform as the Seti@home project, and running the same model that the Met Office uses to make daily weather forecasts, the project aims to use the spare computing cycles of people home pc's to crunch out thousands of variations of climate change models, to see if they can get a concensus on what might happen in the next 50 years - and if just 10,000 people join in, then there will be more processing power than the worlds best supercomputer!

The first results are due to be announced in May, so by joining in you can do your bit towards a greater understanding of global warming.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/climatechange

Our first German profile added today, adding a splash of purple to the picture board. Not sure what he is holding in his hand... answers on a postcard please. Looking forward to seeing more purple on the page soon, as well as some of the other European countries.

Erklären Sie bitte Ihren Freunden über die Million Leute-Seite.
(Please tell your friends about the Million People Page)

At least I hope thats what it says...

Our Alexa ranking has been updated again - not bad for a site which has only been online less than two months... and our daily traffic rank means we are the top 63,000 sites on the internet!

For all you ranking junkies out there, I have added a new page on the site which shows the The Million People Page's biggest movers (up and down) on the site. This page will be updated when the rankings are recalculated each day.

Your change in ranking is also now shown on your profile page, so you can see how much you have moved up or down since the last ranking update.

Remember, your ranking on the site depends on the number of visitors to your profile, so by telling lots of people you are on the site you could be one of the movers and shakers too!

Read an interesting blog entry by Richard Ball of Apogee Web Consulting in which he comments:

"The problem with [pixel advertising] sites is that they have little or no useful content. If you were launching a new magazine, you wouldn't have each page full of ads. Advertisers are looking for content that will attract visitors. Ads themselves aren't content. This is why I think pixel advertising will only survive if it evolves."

The Million People Page is primarily about people, and the connections between them. Ads (aka favourite websites) play an important role, but are a secondary focus to content (people), which is what makes The Million People Page an attractive proposition for people wanting to advertise their site.

In fact, an average 10% of our daily visitors are returning visitors, so not only are we building traffic (our daily traffic on Alexa this week has put us in the top 165,000 sites), but we are retaining it too. After all, people are more interesting than ads

As Richard is somewhat a guru on pixel advertising - being the author of a top ranked pixel ads lens on Squidoo - it was especially exciting to get an email from him with the suggestion that we show the top 100 pictures by default for a while to save people an extra click. So, thanks Richard!

I have added an enhancement so that when it is someones birthday, their name shows up on the homepage. Also, when you view their profile, a Happy Birthday message is displayed.

As luck would have it, it is someones birthday today

If all one million people add their birthday, then by the laws of averages, there will be approximately 2740 birthdays every day. Wow...

But even more surprising is that according to Mathtrek it only takes 23 people in a group for there to be a 50/50 chance that two or more people share a birthday!

As of today (with 67 people on the site) there are already THREE people with the same birthday (1st November). I'll leave it you to find them...

We had our first Irish visitor add a pixel profile today, and the picture was of the lady in question's gorgeous dog (in case you wonder why I am not linking individual profiles in this blog, it is to avoid any bias in rankings). The favourite website - The Million Dog Wall Project deserves a special mention however, as it is a not-for-profit pixel type site raising awareness for Animal Rights. I'm more of a cat person myself, but some of those pooches look very lovable.

I have also noticed a couple of Million People Page wannabes popping up in the last month (it was bound to happen). Most are not as featured as the original though and one of them is asking $5 per picture (with no profile)!

One other pixel site I came across worthy of mention is Million Dollar London. I love the twist on the original pixel advertising format with all the moving buses, taxis and tube trains. The homepage takes a fair bit of time to load, but it is worth it to hear the 'mind the gap'.

Reminds me of all the years I used to commute to the 'big smoke'...