ProjectFlaunt.com Kicks The Bucket

"Project Flaunt," located at the domain projectflaunt.com, was launched in 2000 or 2001; it provided an open-source gallery where users could submit many different kinds of digital objects, browse submissions made by others, and have these objects displayed at random.

We don't hear much about "random viewing" these days. Nobody does studies on the amount of total time spent randomly viewing things, hitting F5/reload, and being delighted or repelled at what comes up. We view random activities as a form of pointless frittering; the cyberspace equivalent of yo-yo'ing, or pulling a slot machine's lever repeatedly not to receive a payoff, but just to see whether all the cherries line up. But for a time randomness was celebrated on the World Wide Web, and Project Flaunt was among its foremost exponents.

Today, however, it's just a ghost site; it's author calls it, a bit bitterly, "a half-hearted little-effort.. an unpolished attempt at what others have done so brilliantly," before posting a link to Flickr.com.