The Faithful Pixel

I shouldn’t even link to this sort of website as it draws attention to it. But I think in this case it is worth doing.

The ‘Faithful Pixel’ (here) entitles itself ‘The Best British Christian Ministry Exhibition in Pixel Form’. It’s the latest ‘Million Dollar Homepage‘ copycat, but this time trying to get money out of UK Christian organisations. Three reasons I’m sceptical:

1) I was spammed with the information about this using my Christian Resources contact details. Unrequested e-mail is spam. And that’s not something most of us like.

2) The blurb says that this site “isn’t primarily about raising finance, it’s about displaying unity and developing relationships”. OK, let’s think about this. £20 for a 10 by 10 pixel block. I make that 20p a pixel. Given that 898,700 pixels are still available by my calculations the site owner is set to make £179740 if he sells all the pixels. That’s a house in these parts. Two houses in some places. even assuming that some of the pixels will sell for less than 20p each we are still talking tens of thousands of pounds. Quite a reasonable amount of money.

3) I’d bet my old winter hat that the organisations listed thus far have not paid to be on this website. Examples listed so far include the Alpha Course, UCB, The Evangelical Alliance (Wales) and CrossRhythms. I wonder whether they have even consented to being on there, let alone paid. I doubt it – if anyone has contact with these organisations I would be interested to hear from them. If it is the case that these organisations haven’t paid to be there then it is deceitful, as it makes other organisations think that those organisations listed have (a) endorsed the project and (b) paid up. It is trying to make the site look more popular than it is. Unintentionally perhaps, but that is the end result.

To the owner I say this. The first million pixel dollar homepage was an idea that hadn’t been done before. It has now been done. Please don’t try and get money out of the Christian organisations you have been contacting in this way unless you do it by (a) not spamming people (b) only listing people who have paid up to be on your site. Even then my own opinion is that it is quite a dubious way to make £100000 plus.

Though perhaps others will disagree.