If you’ve seen The Social Network in theaters (and who hasn’t), you already know all about FaceMash.com, Mark Zuckerberg’s very first website. It was hacked together during a single night of drunk coding in October of 2003.
FaceMash—essentially a version of HotOrNot—was an instant success, attracting more than 22,000 page views in its first night online, before being closed down by the Harvard University administration because it used stolen photos.
The domain name eventually expired, and was snapped up by a domain name investor/speculator for $799 in December of 2009 through a pre-drop auction on SnapNames.
The name went to auction on Flippa.com on October 5th. After three weeks of furious bidding, it closed at $30,201. Not a bad return on investment in less than a year’s time!