Hampster Dance (1999)
Built on the free GeoCities website, the Hampster Dance featured rows of animated GIFs of hamsters.
Created in 1998 by Canadian art student Deidre LaCarte as a bet with her best friend and sister as to who could generate the most Web traffic, the Hampster Dance features rows of animated GIFs of hamsters and other rodents dancing in various ways to a sped-up sample from the song "Whistle-Stop", written and performed by Roger Miller for the 1973 Walt Disney Productions film Robin Hood.
From its creation in August 1998 to March 1999, the Hampster Dance site only recorded about 800 total visits (roughly four per day). In February 1999, word of the website spread by e-mail and early blogs. By March, the site gathered approximately 60,000 views in four days. Soon the site was featured on bumper stickers and in a television commercial for Internet service provider EarthLink. The song was even used for Hannah Montana's ringtone (see below)