Take More Risks

With only the Wayback Machine and a tall glass of Bourbon at hand, I set out to find out a little more about the history of some of the most popular domain names on the Internet.

Read on to find out how Jesus.com was raptured by the Christian Church and why Digg.com looked like something out of one of Jakob Nielsen’s wet dreams….

Digg.com

In 1997, Digg.com was owned by a record company called Digg Records. Going by the design alone, I’m assuming Rose and Co weren’t behind this setup. Perhaps it was the brainchild of Jakob Nielsen? We’ll never know.

I’ve always been a sucker for size 150 Times New Roman on biege. It makes my loins glow red.

Myspace.com

Before it became a retreat for tormented emos and half naked goths, Myspace.com played host to a file storage website in the same vein as a poor mans Megaupload.com. Users had to sign in to access the files where downloads were performed through a clumsy Java interface.

Uncanny isn’t it? It seems the two incarnations of Myspace have more in common than I originally thought.

I had the dubious honour of being an affiliate back in 2001 when they offered cash for uploading files to their virtual drive. I think you received a $1 for every 5mb you uploaded. How were they ever expecting to make money? It would be kinda like me paying each of you $1 everytime I write “fuck” on here.

Facebook.com

Pictured above is an earlier incarnation of Facebook.com which you probably aren’t familiar with. Aboutface, the original owners of Facebook.com, specialised in creating photo galleries for large companies to help improve internal communication.

The sales copy on the website is nothing short of magnificent. Here are some of my favourite snippets.

Welcome to AboutFace Corporation!
Are your colleagues a blur to you?

Hmmm…an eye-test might be of more use? You may also want to cut down on the number of times you masturbate in bed…

You know AboutFace is for you, if you have ever…

…walked down the hall at your office and greeted a coworker as “hey, there” or “hi, buddy” because you had no idea what their name was.

…found yourself at your desk, needing help on a project, and felt stuck because you didn’t know which of your coworkers to call for help.

“Walked down the hall at your office and greeting a co-worker as “hey, there” or “hi buddy”.

WTF? Was AboutFace the secret cure for Alzheimers? Also, they’ve missed a key scenario which is common in every establishment.

“You know AboutFace is for you, if you have ever drank a half gallon beer at lunch, came back to work, talked to the cross-eyed receptionist on the phone, ended up with a stiffy and searched for a photo of her on the internal network without any joy.”

Bebo.com

Bebo.com’s history is pretty unremarkable. Before it became the social networking website it was a whory parked page for a-bazillion-years. Any takers on this offer?

Jesus.com

Jesus.com originally offered visitors the chance to meet and bathe with Jesus until the domain name was seized by Metropolitan Community Churches in 2003. Faux-Christ is now a refugee over at Date Jesus.com where to this day He continues to lead middle-aged women into temptation. Essential viewing for the Hellbound.

Hi5.com

Hi5 is currently one of the fastest growing social networks out there, reaching the coveted Alexa Top 20 earlier this year. However, the domain hasn’t always been in capable hands.

You’ve got to love the honesty of “Hi5.com we willingly take your money”! If only Microsoft or Apple were this transparent. It isn’t exactly clear who hi5.com were or what services they provided. It seems someone’s made a half assed job at editing a generic template and just given up. What’s with the ivnu file extension anyway?

Oh it’s Coldfusion. That explains everything.

Target.com

In 1996 Target.com was owned by Applix Inc, an IT company stationed Westboro, MA. The discount retail outlet Target.com acquired the name a year later, originally using it to publish their monthly newsletter before implementing an online store in 1998.

It’s strange to think that this site was designed in 1996. Most sites of this era were pretty shit in comparison. Here’s a perfect example….