The last couple of months have seen plenty of new countries joining the site - including India, Israel, Venezuela and Brazil. In fact, 26 countries are now represented, and there are over 300 people listed so far, which is over one every day - and the number of people adding profiles has been accelerating over time, which is great.

The most popular birthdays so far are 11th November, 31st May, and 23rd January, and there are some interesting degrees of separation developing.

The Easter Egg feature has also been significantly enhanced, so if you haven't found it yet, keep looking!

And be sure to keep up with your ranking by visiting your profile regularly...

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!

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 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!

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.

One of the most fascinating theories which prompted this site is that of the 6 degrees of separation - the theory that everyone in the world is connected to everyone else through an average of 6 other people.

To really test this theory as the site grows, I have enhanced the "referred by" feature so that it is possible to move up and down the chains of people more easily.

The more people you refer to the site, the more chains that will end up linking to you - imagine being able to click on a random person and then find out that you are connected to them via distant friends!

So, grab a photo of yourself, add yourself to the site, and then tell all your friends - who knows who you may be connected to!