Media Attention
Following the September press release that first brought attention to the site, The Million Dollar Homepage was featured in articles on BBC Online, The Register, The Daily Telegraph, and PC Pro. Tew also appeared on the national breakfast television programmes Sky News Sunrise and BBC Breakfast to discuss the website.
The crucial thing in creating the media interest was the idea itself: it was unique and quirky enough to stand out. I only had to push the idea a bit in the first few days by sending out a press release which essentially acted as a catalyst. This interest coupled with traditional word-of-mouth created a real buzz about the homepage, which in turn created more interest.
Alex Tew, 22 February 2006.By November the website was becoming popular around the world, receiving attention from Financial Times Deutschland in Germany, TVNZ in New Zealand, Terra Networks in Latin America, the China Daily, and especially in the United States where it was covered in Adweek, Florida Today, and Wall Street Journal. Tew hired a US-based publicist to help with the attention from the American media and made a week-long trip to the US, where he was interviewed on ABC News Radio, the Fox News Channel, Attack of the Show!, and local news programmes.
The concept was described as "simple and brilliant", "clever", "ingenious", and "a unique platform which is also a bit of fun". Professor Martin Binks, director of the Nottingham University Institute for Entrepreneurial Innovation, said, "It is brilliant in its simplicity ... advertisers have been attracted to it by its novelty ... the site has become a phenomenon." Popular Mechanics said, "There's no content. No cool graphics, giveaways or steamy Paris Hilton videos for viewers to salivate over. Imagine a TV channel that shows nothing but commercials, a magazine with nothing but ads. That's The Million Dollar Homepage. An astonishing example of the power of viral marketing". Don Oldenburg of the Washington Post was one of the few without praise for the site, calling it a "cheap, mind-bogglingly lucrative marketing monstrosity, an advertising badlands of spam, banner ads and pop-ups." Oldenburg continues, "it looks like a bulletin board on designer steroids, an advertising train wreck you can't not look at. It's like getting every pop-up ad you ever got in your life, at once. It's the Internet equivalent of suddenly feeling like you want to take a shower."
As the final pixels were being auctioned, Tew was interviewed on Richard & Judy, and profiled in the online BBC News Magazine. The Wall Street Journal wrote about The Million Dollar Homepage and its impact on the Internet community. "Mr. Tew himself has taken on celebrity status in the Internet community ... the creative juice ... paints an interesting picture of online entrepreneurship".
Tew dropped out of the business degree the site was set up to fund after one term. In 2008, Tew founded Popjam, an Internet aggregation and social networking business.
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