Site Beginnings
In the summer of 2002, Bosnak registered the Internet domain name savekaryn.com, and launched the site to request voluntary donations from the public. It had occurred to Bosnak that if she could receive just a few donations of several thousand dollars from a few wealthy people, or thousands of donations of one dollar from average-income people, she could pay off her debts. She reasoned that any amount given would be relatively insignificant to the donor, but if she found enough donors, the aggregate would be quite significant to her. An early version of the site announced "WANTED: $20,000. CREDIT CARDS ARE BAD. Hello! My name is Karyn, I’m really nice and I’m asking for your help! You see, I have this huge credit card debt and I need $20,000 to pay it off. So if you have an extra buck or two, please send it my way... Together we can banish credit card debt from my life." Her request echoed the matter-of-fact style of her initial plea to the online community, which she had made using craigslist.org.
Bosnak was not the first individual to openly solicit voluntary donations via the Internet; documented examples go back at least as far as 1998. However, she was one of the first to have a clearly defined goal (rather than "I want money", she stated that she needed a specific amount to eliminate her credit card debt). She regularly updated the site with amounts received and progress made toward her goal.
Read more about this topic: Save Karyn
Famous quotes containing the words site and/or beginnings:
“It is not menstrual blood per se which disturbs the imagination—unstanchable as that red flood may be—but rather the albumen in the blood, the uterine shreds, placental jellyfish of the female sea. This is the chthonian matrix from which we rose. We have an evolutionary revulsion from slime, our site of biologic origins. Every month, it is woman’s fate to face the abyss of time and being, the abyss which is herself.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“[Many artists], even the greatest ones, are not sure of their own existence. So they search for proof, they judge, they condemn. It strengthens them, it is the beginnings of existence. They are alone!”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)