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How One Merchandiser Lost $1M Trying to Monetize the 'Hamster Dance' Site (www.cbc.ca)
The CBC is marking the 20th anniversary of the notorious Hampsterdance web site with a 10,000-word oral history by arts reporter Leah Collins, promising "the twisted true story of one of the world's first memes."
An anonymous reader writes: Deidre LaCarte, a Canadian martial arts instructor, created the site as part of a contest between her friend and her sister to see whose site could attract the most visitors by December 31st, 1998. Deidre won -- then remembers later waking up to news crews at her front door asking about that web site she'd created that had become a worldwide phenomenon. Slashdot's CmdrTaco linked to the site on February 9th, 1999, and hundreds of millions of pageviews later the CBC traces the site's evolution into Hampsterdance -- the Album, which included the less-remembered rock song "Hampster Party." (Recorded under a pseudonym by The Boomtang Boys, it was described by the Onion A.V. Club as "the definitive hamster party anthem of the new millennium," in their year-end retrospective "Least Essential Albums of 2000.")
The CBC also interviewed members from a competing U.K. band that created knock-off versions of the site's hamster-y song for their own hit record, Cognoscenti vs. Intelligentsia. The Canadian hamster band enjoyed some popularity on Disney radio -- one song even became Hannah Montana's ringtone, and Britney Spears reportedly expressed an interest in recording their soulful hamster ballad, "Life is Good." Hallmark also says they ultimately used hampsterdance songs in over 100 different products. But whatever happened to the web site itself?
Bill Porfido, president of a merchandising firm called Abatis International, eventually purchased the site, and described the resulting disaster as "How one man sunk a million trying to turn the world's most annoying website into the biggest thing in kiddie entertainment." Failed monetization attempts included a cartoon series about a world-travelling "Hampster" band -- the official Hampsterdance.com site is still selling a DVD titled How The Hampsters Saved Winter. "One million dollars. It's almost a million, what we lost," Porfido complains, saying the site is now maintained by his old business partner, Brian Hoffman -- and adding "I haven't spoken to Brian in about three years, but I know he's tired of it."
But Porfido later admits that "even though it was a money sponge, I enjoyed every minute of it.
"People are like, 'Hampsterdance? That's you? That's you?!' It kind of gave you a little taste of fame even though it was -- bogus. (Laughs)."
An anonymous reader writes: Deidre LaCarte, a Canadian martial arts instructor, created the site as part of a contest between her friend and her sister to see whose site could attract the most visitors by December 31st, 1998. Deidre won -- then remembers later waking up to news crews at her front door asking about that web site she'd created that had become a worldwide phenomenon. Slashdot's CmdrTaco linked to the site on February 9th, 1999, and hundreds of millions of pageviews later the CBC traces the site's evolution into Hampsterdance -- the Album, which included the less-remembered rock song "Hampster Party." (Recorded under a pseudonym by The Boomtang Boys, it was described by the Onion A.V. Club as "the definitive hamster party anthem of the new millennium," in their year-end retrospective "Least Essential Albums of 2000.")
The CBC also interviewed members from a competing U.K. band that created knock-off versions of the site's hamster-y song for their own hit record, Cognoscenti vs. Intelligentsia. The Canadian hamster band enjoyed some popularity on Disney radio -- one song even became Hannah Montana's ringtone, and Britney Spears reportedly expressed an interest in recording their soulful hamster ballad, "Life is Good." Hallmark also says they ultimately used hampsterdance songs in over 100 different products. But whatever happened to the web site itself?
Bill Porfido, president of a merchandising firm called Abatis International, eventually purchased the site, and described the resulting disaster as "How one man sunk a million trying to turn the world's most annoying website into the biggest thing in kiddie entertainment." Failed monetization attempts included a cartoon series about a world-travelling "Hampster" band -- the official Hampsterdance.com site is still selling a DVD titled How The Hampsters Saved Winter. "One million dollars. It's almost a million, what we lost," Porfido complains, saying the site is now maintained by his old business partner, Brian Hoffman -- and adding "I haven't spoken to Brian in about three years, but I know he's tired of it."
But Porfido later admits that "even though it was a money sponge, I enjoyed every minute of it.
"People are like, 'Hampsterdance? That's you? That's you?!' It kind of gave you a little taste of fame even though it was -- bogus. (Laughs)."
Would have been xhamster.
Those commercial "hampster" figures/images are poorly designed. They have nothing in common with plump silly original "hampsters". Seem like an attempt to make a figure look "sexy" or something. Very creepy. Whoever designed these should have asked actual children, may be.
Probably the same kind of person that thought to try merchandising a simple mobile game with some cartoon birds and pigs. I wonder how much money Angry Birds merchandise has made. Sometimes big cultural phenomenon pay off, other times not.
When a site falls behind on updating the copyright date in the footer, it's a sign things are over. When it's been nearly FIVE YEARS since they've updated the copyright date, it's LONG, LONG over. Definitely time to pull the plug on that thing.
I learned about it only in 2011/2012. Some dumbass insisted I watch the video. A Windows admin of course, he was enamored with it and couldn't believe I had never heard of it. I forgot about it until now.
Now I have that mutherfucking song stuck in my head again.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
20th anniversary? ugh. I remember when that first came out, I showed it to everyone at work. There was no content, just that loud repeating song and these little figures twirling around on the entire page. It was like nothing we'd ever seen before. We were just wondering, "Is there a point to it?" "Are they tryin to send some kind of message?" Web pages were all just so literal back then, like nobody had realized you could just DO stuff to have fun, that there didn't HAVE to be a point to it. I think that's what made it so popular for its few day of fame.
I also recall all those spinning characters really hurting the web browser and machine, like 100% CPU usage to get them good enough to only just stutter a little bit. Some of the computers couldn't handle it at all. But back then it was somewhat unusual to see ANY animation on a web page, let alone the entire page. And it didn't matter how big your monitor was, you could full-screen the window and it STILL filled the page with twirling hamsters.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
sad merchant
Must have just been popular in my corner. I remember rediscovering it around the 00's. Probably learned about it in 2001, but I think it has been around as since Geocities days.
And what kind of person thinks a website called hamster dance is worth spending $1m on.
Someone that doesn't understand that fads fade.
When the news crews show up at the door, you are already at peak hamster.
Also, it isn't 1999 anymore, so why does the site still require Flash?
I listen to the song at least once a month. For the past 20 years. And I doubt I've been to the website other than the first time I heard about it here on slashdot.
I can totally see losing $50k on it, because it has a cult following and it couldM/em> have value. But $1m?!
I'd even say $10m would make more sense than $1m. You're not going to start a fad with $1m, and you don't need $1m to shoestring it. It should have been either highly funded, or minimally funded. The big mistake here is going medium.
That was an existing game company that knew what they were doing and they spent the money to hype it.
When they talk about software on cable newsvertainment channels, they were paid to. Twitter was totally mainstream before most people had ever heard of it; Ruby programmers knew about it before the hype train launched, but when they first started talking about it on the "news" it was a small site with just a few users. And they hadn't even turned it into "microblogging" yet, it was still asking the question, "What are you doing right now?" It was after they were already hyping it (hyping as a verb means to pay to have it talked about on newsvertainment) that they figured out what value the users found in it.
Angry Birds was being hyped for something like 2 years. You don't do that for $1m.
Could be worse. With a bit of Y2K-bugged javascript it could say © 1997 - 118.
This space intentionally left blank
And then I disable Javascript and the site is public domain... :-)
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
In various forms. The original is long-gone, but it's been mirrored both with and without authorization at various times.
It's a rodent made of wicker that you can put things inside?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
One mili-dollar. That's not that much is it?!
There was a website? I thought it was just some crappy song.
Hampton the Hamster "The Hamsterdance Song" https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I always wondered if Disney ever got involved in a lawsuit regarding the merchandise. The original Hamster Dance song is nothing more than a sped-up sound clip from the animated version of Robin Hood.