For those in the world who do not already know (where have you been?), last night in Namibia, Africa, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt welcomed their daughter Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt to the world. The name Shiloh, means 'peaceful' in Hebrew.

It was reported that the first picture of the baby would fetch up to $3 million (£1.6m), with the proceeds being given to Unicef, for whom Jolie acts as an ambassador, and other projects in Africa.

Congratulations to both, and good for them using the media interest to help such worthy causes.

Closer to home, we welcomed our first Chinese profile on the site this weekend, and also a new advertising partner, AdBrite.

With AdBrite, you can now book your advert on our pages online, and pay a flat rate for either a day, week or the month. Sponsored Links are shown full time across all free profile pages in prime area directly beneath the profile itself, as well as above the fold in the "Cool Sites" section of the Blog, and at the bottom of the photo display grid.

To mark this auspicious weekend, we have set special low introductory rates. For maximum exposure, only 4 advertisers are allowed at any one time, so first come, first served. Book your ad now.

Word of mouth is the best type of advertising; its free, and a great idea, service or product can quickly reach millions of people when friends tell friends about it.

But it can also be one of the most difficult to achieve. We all have our networks of friends, but often they don't often want to be 'sold' our new product or business idea, regardless of how soft the sell. And how many will then tell their friends?

Enter the Million People Page. Instead of telling all your friends about your new website and just hoping they will find it exciting enough to pass on, why not add a profile, then invite them all to join in too - so you can all discover your six degrees of separation.

That way, not only will you get a great ranking on our site, but you also piggy back your favourite website onto a great viral one! One which your friends friends are much more likely to pass on. After all, giving your friends the opportunity to find out their six degrees of separation means there is something in it for them too...

And if you don't have a website to promote, you can just enjoy the fun of joining in and seeing how you are connected to the world!

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We welcomed our first Danish profile on the site this week, and the canny Scots are moving up the rankings as the word spreads in Edinburgh. We have an amazing 9 degrees of separation on the site already, and growing each day.

I have also recently added a visitor map to the site, so people can see where all our visitors are coming from.

Sorry, the movers screen and rankings data is all over the place today because I have tweaked the ranking algorithm so that it takes account of people who have made referral connections.

This is to ensure that the ranking system continues to work as originally intended, i.e. allowing the most connected people to move up the rankings, rather than just the most visually appealing (or unusual!) people who get lots of profile views.

The movers screen and ranking changes should straighten themselves out overnight when they are recalculated.

I think this new algorithm will make the ranking system fairer for those who join as time goes on, as well as emphasising one of the primary aims of the site - letting people discover their 'six degrees of separation'. This way, people can now proactively gain ranking by making connections, as well as by generating profile views.

Google has given us a pagerank of 5 - which shows us as an "important, high quality site". Which is even better news for people wanting to advertise their website via their profile.

The ranking system is starting to settle down nicely, with those people with the most referal links (and the most friends visiting their profile) moving up the rankings. In fact, our current number one ranked person moved from lowest to highest ranking in the space of a week by telling all his friends, so if you are on the site and haven't told all your friends yet - do it today!

We reached our first milestone yesterday - 100 people on the site, from 6 countries. These 100 people represent 100,000 of the worlds internet users, and 650,000 of the people in the world, and we have at least one example of '6 degrees of separation', so we are on track so far!

Thanks to everyone who has helped spread the world so far - there are still 1 billion more internet users out there who have not yet visited the site, so please continue to tell your friends!

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!

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!

I have added a nifty counter which people can add to their blog or webpage. It is automatically updated as each new profile is added, so you can easily keep track of the number of people on the site. The html you need to add is here:

<a title="The Million People Page" href="http://www.millionpeoplepage.com/"><img src="http://www.millionpeoplepage.com/images/counter.jpg" alt="The Million People Page - Progress Update" height="50" width="440" border="0"></a>

The counter displays like this:

I have been pretty happy with the response to the site so far - and with a full index in Google now, people are starting to find the site in searches. 30 people have added profiles so far - thats almost one every day the site has been online - and traffic has been steadily growing all week. Alexa has moved our traffic rank from an initial rank of 3,600,000 to 2,399,000 already, and our average this week puts us in the top million websites... Even better, our daily traffic rank even made us the 300,000th most popular site on the internet on Wednesday this week! Wow - that's the power of word of mouth!

But this site is all about people finding out who they are connected to - via six degrees of separation - so in order to really grow the number of connections quickly I have made payment optional for now. People who make a contribution with their profile order will have their profile added within 24/48 hours, and be listed with no adverts. All other profiles submitted are not guaranteed entry, and if listed, these profiles may contain ads.

I found myself awake at 4:30am this morning, thanks to a head cold, and despite a branded hot lemon drink, found I couldn't get back to sleep at all. So, out of sheer want of anything better to do whilst waiting for sunrise, I settled down to surf the net and see what was interesting people in the world.

My very canny wife, Heidi, had the idea of creating a 'Top Sites' page to make the favourite websites feature more prominent, and the site an even better advertising proposition for people primarily wanting to plug a website.

So, here are the top websites on the Million People Page. By Rank, lists the websites chosen by the top ranked people, and By Popularity selects the websites most often chosen by people on the site.

I have also relaxed the validation on the buy a pixel profile page so that only Country and email address are mandatory, as some of my friends let me know that they would love to join in, but were uncomfortable with the information they had to give. So you can leave out anything you don't want to include (like Birthday) or even the photo if you are camera shy. Email addresses are used for ordering purposes only and DO NOT form part of your profile.

On the press front, I have contacted some of the top UK news providers: BBC News; Sky News; and The Register, as well as my favourite magazine, BBC Focus, and radio station, Virgin Radio.

No responses yet, but ever the opimist...

It was very exciting to login to my email over the weekend and see the first flurry of paypal receipts, plus a heap of emails from friends who think the idea is great. So, the homepage now shows a small pink line in the top left corner representing these pioneers, which you can click to reveal their photos and profiles.

Thanks to everyone for their support so far, and for those of you who have not yet added your profile - I know it is a big decision which photo to use, but the homepage will look much better with you on it! And remember to tell your friends.

After nearly a week of frantic keybashing on my Apple Mac in between clients, the Million People Page is finally born! The launch was marked by emailing all the people in my address book and issuing a press release.

The idea is to try and create a unique single page snapshot of the world's internet users and how they are connected. The Million People Page takes the original pixel advertising concept site 'The Million Dollar Homepage' by Alex Tew and adds a unique human twist (because humans are better than adverts).

By adding a photo and your details (which includes a 'favourite website' link for those who want to promote a website) and then emailing everyone you know (telling them your unique Person ID), the site will not only form a unique sample of the world population - the only place you can meet a million people! - but will also track the 6 degrees of separation of all the people on the site and the progress of your email.

So please, please, please, support this by buying a pixel profile for US $2 and then emailing all your friends and urging them to do the same. Or even if you don’t want to add your details, please still tell all the people you know. The result should be really cool, and the site should generate lots of interest, and will potentially be seen by millions of people over the coming years. Forget 15 minutes of fame - this is a minimum 5 years of fame (for you and your favourite website).

Thanks a million!
Rob