In 1996, we wanted to register a “cute” domain name, something that people would remember. “Cyberspud.com” seemed catchy, it was available, and it became our first domain acquisition - one of more than 100 registered domains to date.
As obvious as it was to us, other people didn’t quite grasp exactly what the name meant. We explained that it was the Internet version of the “couch potato”: “cyber” (Internet) + “spud” (potato).
“Oh.”
Thinking a visual would help, we commissioned an artist to draw “Cyberspud” for use on our original site which was no more than a group of pages with hundreds of links to other sites on various topics.
Cyberspud.com was our “list-o-links” contribution to the Web at a time when it seemed important to put such a site together.
A lot of novice web designers get their start with list-o-links sites, trying to make theirs more unique and more comprehensive than anyone else’s. Our site and idea were not unique.
For a couple of years we spent a lot of time adding new links submitted by people who discovered Cyberspud as they surfed the Web. But the biggest chunks of time were spent editing and deleting links as sites moved, closed, or were redirected to porn sites.
Finally, because Google, Yahoo, Metacrawler, and several other search engines make finding information on any topic a snap, we deleted our links pages entirely. Now we only link to sites we own or control in some way.
And that’s how Cyberspud.com came about.