First of all, despite what you might have heard, Christian was never the owner or “head” of TheSpark.com. He was hired by the founders, as I was, in the Fall/Winter of 1999. TheSpark.com’s founders and chief officers created TheSpark.com and SparkNotes.com while Seniors at Harvard University.

From the very beginning, the plan among the founders, as well as SparkNotes.com head editor, Justin Kestler, was to use the popularity of TheSpark.com to fund investment and growth for the then small study guide sister site, SparkNotes.com. The thought was that the chances for long-term sustainability lay with SparkNotes.com, and not with TheSpark.com. And in the end they were right, the internet bubble burst, all the comedy content sites on the net except for a few disappeared.

But let’s get back to one of the reasons I wanted to sound off. Both sites were initially bought by web property iTurf. Remember iTurf? I didn’t think so. They were a web community that never took off, but they paid us a lot of money in stock to bring us into their network. Most of us cashed our iTurf stock well before they went belly up. It was the iTurf acquisition that was truly profitable for the founders, as well as Christian.

You can look it up, but the SEC filing for the sale of TheSpark.com & SparkNotes.com to Barnes & Noble was around $3,500, pretty small potatos compared to what iTurf poneyed up initially. I’d say B&N got a pretty good deal, seeing how SparkNotes has continued to flourish in their stores and online.

It’s also true, though, that Christian turned away from TheSpark.com in order to pursue other interests, like his music and film projects with friend, Andrew Bujalski. But the real truth is that TheSpark.com was a short-term phenomenon that was sort of planned as such. It was a pretty good plan, too, seeing as how all the guys made out compared to lots of other sites of the time. And SparkNotes continues as a legacy, you can’t do much better than that!!!

One more factoid, there was once an interest from Hollywood to develoip a TV show around TheSpark, but the guys didn’t like the pitch that the executive gave them, and passed on it.