In 2004, CollegeHumor.com was (and still is) a clever up and coming social website targeting college students, skewed towards males. One of the big draws to the site was the photo section, frequently filled with topless girls with naughty notes on their chests expressing their love for College Humor.

During the 2004 presidential election, girls (mostly) started submitting topless, bottomless, headless, and even “Bush”less photos with the name of their preferred presidential candidate. I did my research and saw slogans like “Boobs for Kerry,” “Vote Kerry ’04 – Bush can’t touch this,” and of course “NO MORE BUSH IN 04′ – Election Erection 2004.” These photos were all submitted under the theme, “Election Erection.”

In August of 2006, Barry Diller’s IAC purchased a 51% stake in the company that founded CollegeHumor.com, Connected Ventures, LLC. According to the press release at the time:

“NEW YORK, Aug. 15 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — IAC/InterActiveCorp (Nasdaq: IACI) announced today that it has acquired a 51% stake and full voting control of Connected Ventures, LLC, parent of leading comedy site CollegeHumor.com. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. CollegeHumor is the first site to join IAC Programming, launched earlier this year to buy and build branded online content properties that engage passionate communities.” — Source: Gawker

Shortly after the success of “Election Erection,” Connected Ventures, LLC purchased the domain name ElectionErection.com. Thinking it might all link back to CollegeHumor.com and the photo section tagged “Election Erection,” I navigated there and surprisingly found an adult site needing me to certify I was of proper legal age (well, that’s not the surprise). To my surprise, it forwards to a male gay adult site (LikeMyGayPhoto.com) owned by FriendFinder.

My question…. why would a site whose name was founded on the premise of girls flashing the camera be a gay adult site? Shouldn’t they leverage the brand they created and celebrate the 2008 presidential election accordingly? I guess it might be strange to see a topless girl with whose boobs are tagged, “Bush is Gone; Vote Hillary!”

Photo sharing websites like Shutterfly, Webshots, Snapfish, and Flickr are doing more than just allowing users to share photos with friends. These popular websites are preserving history by archiving images that could be lost or destroyed if disaster strikes and they are only contained in a physical form.   They are also great if you accidentally misplace your photos.  

Take victims of the recent California wildfires as an example. For some, there wasn’t even an opportunity to gather belongings for safekeeping when the calls for evacuation were made.   Evacuees  quickly grabbed whatever valuables they could, and if they were lucky, their houses would be intact upon return. Unfortunately, this was not the outcome for many wildfire victims.

From an article in the Boston Globe, Robert Sanders was one of the unlucky ones who lost everything:

“The lucky ones will find their homes still standing amid a blackened landscape. Others, like Robert Sanders, are not so fortunate.The 56-year-old photographer returned to a smoldering mound that once was his rented house in the San Diego neighborhood of Rancho Bernardo.

Among the possessions he lost were his transparencies, melted inside a fire-resistant box, and a photograph of his father.

“I’ve lost my history,” Sanders said. “All the work I’ve done for the past 30 years, it’s all destroyed.” — Source: Boston Globe

The lesson here is that people should use the online photo sharing sites as much as possible in an effort to preserve their photo histories. This is an easy way to save your memories in photo form.   It doesn’t cost anything to upload or share photos, and it’s very easy to order prints – just like going to the pharmacy.