Comment by JonnieCache

14 years ago

On the contrary, the page is a piece of internet history. As you can see from the domain, it was created by an academic in an early example of titlebait.

http://replay.web.archive.org/20001002213854/http://www.brit...

Its basically a reverse rickroll. "Britney Spears" was by far the most searched-for term on the internet for a long time.

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JonnieCache

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biot  14 years ago

.ac is the country code for Ascension Island and domains on that TLD are required to be academic in the same way that Colombia's .co domains are required to be companies (in other words, there is no requirement). There's a page on how to advertise on the site and a merchandise page as well. Sorry, but I'm still not seeing how this wasn't built as primarily a revenue generator.

  • JonnieCache  14 years ago

    Hmmm... Well in that case for more evidence I am going to have to fall back on the assertion that I remember hearing a reference to it being set up in the 90s by a physics professor as a joke, in a documentary about memes on BBC Radio 4:

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00zlk03

    Although you can't stream that programme and I appreciate that my half-recollections are hardly convincing.

    What does seem likely is that the site was in fact set up in the 90s by a physics professor as a joke, and since then it has been used to make money, precisely because it was popular and unusual at the time. Maybe he sold it to someone back in the good old 90s bubble, when men were men and a domain name was a business model.

    (Fun Fact: That documentary was presented by the woman who wrote the article about LSD that was on here recently.)