The Dirt.com Story
The Dirt.com Story
Sometime in 2010, our owner was sitting around with a bunch of really smart friends at a dinner party. We hear the reason that this group of really smart people hang out with our boss is that they like looking at his wife.
Anyway…
As the scrumptious chocolate cheesecake was served, the talk at the table turned to gossip. Not just any gossip, but celebrity gossip. Mind you, these were intelligent professionals (many with Ivy League degrees) discussing the latest on what was happening in Hollywood—celeb pregnancies, box office flops, who slept with who and got a rash afterward…
This group of people could have easily been discussing world hunger, Dostoevsky, or the stock market, but no. Rashes were significantly more important.
Our owner was totally blown away by how much the celebrity culture had taken over almost every facet of our lives. He was amazed that everyone at the table knew what was going on and how much delight they took in talking about it.
At one point in the conversation, a usually reserved “Harvard type” said, “This is the best dirt I’ve heard all day!” Coming from a guy who plays racquetball with felons, this meant a lot to our owner.
It was at that moment that our owner actually understood the power of dirt, celebrity gossip, and entertainment news. It wasn’t just an old woman secretly reading The National Enquirer in her air-conditioned trailer home with Wheel of Fortune playing in the background. It was Everyone! It was Everywhere, It was the Masses!!! Wahoo!
As our owner finished his chocolate cheesecake and decaf coffee, he started doing his second favorite pastime: thinking about the “what ifs.”
Note: His first favorite pastime is listening to his wife, who is gorgeous, perfect, and ALWAYS right.
What if he built another business that created a centralized forum where everyone in the world could come to gossip and dish Dirt?
What if this place not only dished the hottest and most recent dirt, but also gave its visitors a centralized location to talk and give opinions about the Dirt? Kind of like the dinner party but with millions of more people. But no cheesecake. *sad face*
He loved the idea of taking the dinner party conversation and making it a digital place which would allow millions of people to have conversations, share their thoughts about the most publicized happenings in Hollywood, and participate in spirited conversations with people all over the world. And look at totally cool pictures and stuff.
Since our owner has been called a marketing genius (by the kid batting clean-up on a t-ball team he coaches), he had to come up with a name for the new company! He had the most logical choice for the most brandable domain name in the world:
…Dirt.com. (*Insert audience’s gasps here*)
A Short Time after the Dinner Party:
A short time after the dinner party (and after he dropped the weight from the chocolate cheesecake), our owner went into negotiation mode to buy Dirt.com so he could launch what would soon become the most important website in the world (according to our owner’s brother who owes him money).
After intense negotiations to buy the domain name—which included something about an unborn slave child, an internal organ, embarrassing webcam pictures of the previous owner, and (rumor has it) a testicle—he purchased and became the official owner of Dirt.com.
December 2010
In December 2010, our owner and his wife were invited to the Sundance Film Festival by their friends Ron and Tina.
Feeling all great about Dirt.com, our owner applied to Sundance for a press pass for Dirt.com, even though it was not a real business yet.
He was turned down.
However, our owner knew he had an very unique opportunity with Dirt.com when the people at Sundance said that Dirt was denied a press pass because of what they wrote about last year’s film festival…
Say what?
Sundance had thought they had heard of Dirt.com before! They hadn’t, as the website was not even up yet. As a matter of fact, everyone we spoke to in December 2010 said they had definitely heard of Dirt.com. They hadn’t either. Doh!
All this reinforced our owner’s idea that Dirt.com may very well be the most brandable domain name in the world for the gossip and celebrity entertainment industry.
Well, since Dirt.com really did not exist and yet everyone said they had heard of us, we decided we better slap together a website, as it looked like this entire idea (that sprouted from a dinner party over chocolate cheesecake) might be good…REALLY good.
January 2011
Our owner banned incense in the office…Something about 1970s flashbacks.
We didn’t listen to him. He’s apparently really smart about building businesses, but he’s kind of an old fart and out of it… so we kept the patchouli burning anyway. He didn’t notice.
April 2011
Our owner had a young, low-paid nerd named Ted build a basic website for Dirt.com.
Ted did not last long. Ted learned that he was only going to be a temporary employee so he refused to put the website up.
So, one of the gals in the office had to go out to happy hour with Ted to talk him into changing his mind.
Thankfully, she got him to put the site up…and we will be forever thankful to our colleague for “taking one for the team” on that fateful tequila-fueled night. We heard Ted definitely had a smile on his face. Our colleague, on the other hand, was slightly traumatized by the whole experience.
Sorry about that, by that way…
Late April 2011
The site was so impactful that it was nominated as the top website in the world by Top Website in the World Magazine, which by the way, is also owned by our owner.
Many complaints about the articles ensued. We did absolutely nothing about the complaints. Do we LOOK like Customer Service?
Many people started talking about Dirt.com, so we decided to begin taking this more seriously by not coming to work hung over anymore and actually answering the phones when they rang.
May 2011
We decided to write a really great Dirt.com storyline, but then we decided that a lot of other things were way more important…like screwing around on Facebook and posting phony Free Car ads on Craigslist with our ex-boyfriends’ cell phone numbers.
Anyway, we just kept writing stories that obviously pissed a lot of people off.
We figured out that we had a formula here.
People love to have a soapbox, and we were going to give them one. And not just any soapbox, but as one of the janitors in our office building says, “the biggest one in the whole damn world.”
He drinks a lot.
We were also called geniuses by one of our mothers. (Thanks, Judy!)
June 2011
We spent the entire month writing a tagline for Dirt.com and ended up with, “Dirt.com, the most humongous place online on the Internet in the entire world.”
July 2011
We scrapped the tagline.
We also got introduced to the word “crowdsourcing.” We like it a lot so we will use it a lot.
Dirt.com is all about crowdsourcing.
It’s Dirt’s crowdsourcing that matters most.
Dirt’s mobile approach will be a crowdsource magnet.
Dirt.com will leverage the impact of crowdsourcing.
I’ll have a Grey Goose and crowdsourcing, please.
My urologist said I need to start crowdsourcing more.
August 2011
Dirt.com decided to have a mascot. She is called the DirtBunny. Her real name is Kelly. Our slightly disturbed friend is going to dress up in a bunny suit and crash the red carpet.
We have not bought the suit yet. And Kelly doesn’t know she is actually going to do this, so shut up.
September 2011
We continued working on the site that one critic has called “amazing.”
The critic happens to be our owner’s sister, who was just being nice so she could come visit our owner’s Arizona home in the winter. Nice try, Sheila. Aunt Tina already called dibs on the spare room. Suckaaaa!
October 2011:
We have a lot of people coming to Dirt.com and our owner has been busy coming up with stupid taglines, mission statements, and business plans. Apparently, he thinks it is a good idea to have all this done before Dirt gets too out of control.
We just want to keep writing amazing stories for you! And drink during the workday. But we won’t.
We think our owner’s attorneys, advisors, and investment bankers are all “old men with too much money” who want to slow everything down, but they have a few stipulations of their own…Something about getting the site and mobile application ready to handle many millions of visitors a month. Whatevs.
Not that this means anything to you right now but we were told to say, “Our new site and mobile application are coming! Stay tuned!”
So there—we said it, boss!
Got to go…
We are starting to crowdsource the hell out of this thing.
Take care, read Dirt, and always remember to line the toilet seat.
~Team Dirt