HampsterDance
Hampster Dance, which is purposely misspelled, is one of the earliest single-purpose websites. The site was created by Canadian art student Deidre LeCarte in 1998 and featured rows of animated GIFs of hamsters and other small rodents dancing to a sped-up sample of Roger Miller’s “Whistle Stop”. LaCarte created the webpage because she was in a competition with her sister and best friend to see which one of them could generate the most web traffic. The site’s full name was Hampton’s Hamster House in honor of her pet hamster, Hampton Hamster.
LaCarte’s website did not get popular until March 1999, by that summer the site had over 17 million views. The popularity of the site led to the release of a song called “The Hampsterdance Song”, which was produced by The Boomtang Boys and released in 2000 – it was based on a sample of “Whistle Stop”. The song has been featured in few films and at one point, an animated series based on the hamsters was planned by Canadian animation studio Nelvana.