The Hampster Dance

The story

She built it for a contest with her sister and a friend over who could get the busiest website, and she spelled hampster with a p on purpose. The whole page was four little hamster GIFs repeated dozens of times, with music playing in the background, which was still a novelty on a web page.

At first almost nobody came: about 800 visits, roughly four a day. Then, in February 1999, the link started travelling by email and early blogs, the tech site Slashdot sent its readers, and by March it was drawing about 60,000 views in four days. LaCarte won the contest, and woke up to news crews at her door.

By October 1999 the page and a copy at hampsterdance.com had passed nine million hits, with T-shirts and mugs on sale. In 2000 The Hampsterdance Song, credited to Hampton the Hampster, went to number one in Canada.

Why it matters

It is one of the first single-serving sites, a whole website built around one silly joke, and an early lesson in how hard a meme is to cash in on: the company that later bought the rights said it lost almost a million dollars.

Where it is now

The original GeoCities page no longer exists, but copies and the official hampsterdance.com live on, and the Computer History Museum shows it as one of the most iconic memes of the early web.