About a year ago,a guy in England created a revolutionary website with the intention of paying off his student loans using the proceeds from his site. The concept? Create one million pixel-sized blocks and auction off each pixel for a dollar. The idea was that advertisers would buy blocks of pixels and use the space for advertising. The idea was a hit and the kid got his million (check it out at The Million Dollar Homepage). It was a proud, proud day for internet entrepreneurs everywhere.

I am sad to report, however, that after enduring several other copycat-style stunts, like the Million Penny Homepage or the House for Kim homepage, where you can help a woman pay for her house, pixel by pixel, we have hit an all-time low. Now you can buy a pixel at the Utah Valley Million website, which is a shameless ripoff of the original million dollar homepage. At least the other guys had the decency to try to disguise the fact that they were being unoriginal. These guys? Same color scheme, same layout, sheesh, these guys could barely even come up with their own tagline! The biggest difference? They only charge 10 cents for “a piece of Utah Valley internet history.” Personally, I’m not sure there’s enough pieces of Utah Valley internet history to justify spending ten cents on a piece, because a piece of nothing is… oh yeah, nothing. Seriously, name one milestone of the internet that has happened in Utah Valley. Just one.

And I don’t even want to start on the horrible site design. I mean, forget the menus that make you feel like you’ve had too much to drink, even when you’re stone cold sober, and the obnoxious red ball that follows your pointer across the screen.

So anyway, I really didn’t want to link to these guys because I think they’re sorry, unoriginal, and the epitome of so many things that are wrong with business thinking in Utah Valley, but I did (using rel=”nofollow”, for what good it’ll do me), just so you can see what I’m talking about. Please, please don’t buy advertising from them. And for you guys at PowerTri.com, go and try to create something new, original and useful, instead of clogging the internet with your copycat moneygrubbing stunts.