my site http://funnyemails.uni.cc/ just made it to PR4 from PR0. and it just happends to make it to the 1 search result on the yahoo search for the keyword funny email.
PageRank is a meaningless object. IT IS ONLY A MEANS TO SHOW HOW MANY AND THE QUALITY OF BACKLINKS YOU HAVE. There are numerous other things that the search engine takes into consideration when ranking web sites so you should be focusing on getting lots of visitors, than getting a number out of 10 in a little green bar.
I think your not in #1, I saw your site on #3 but still in the first page of SERP. Nice! Now that's a huge jump for a increase in PR.
'meaningless' is a little strong - if it's a reflection of your site having quality backlinks then it's a very useful indicator that you're advertising (or have fans that link to you) is working. Add that to getting lots of traffic and you're made - that's a successful website
Too many people have the thought that Pagerank is useless. If it is useless then why didn't Google take it off? The right word to use is: Pagerank is one of the few important factors to consider. Ignoring Pagerank is not a good idea. It's not THE ONLY considerations, but ONE of the considerations
Well I haven't been working to get PageRank and I've this update took me from PR N/A to PR4. My traffic hasn't increased considerably (or even at all after all of this). Maybe useless is a bit strong, but it certainly shouldn't be the main thing you should work for - traffic, clickthroughs and bounce rates are far FAR more important than a little green bar and a number that has little effect on real search engine ranking