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Several years ago, I had a brilliant idea for a website. Sort of. What I mean is, I had the brilliant idea that I should come up with an idea for a website, and use that website to make lots of money. So basically, I was just a few synapses firing away from inventing Facebook. That's what I tell myself.

While I was trying to come up with this idea for a website, I went ahead and bought a domain name, so I'd be ready when it happened. It was actually a pretty good domain, and had those synapses gotten around to firing, I'm sure I could have done great things with it. But they didn't, and when the domain registration expired, I didn't bother renewing.

A few weeks ago, I thought about my old domain for the first time in a while, and decided to see if anyone had picked it up since I let it lapse. Yes, someone did, and now he (there's no doubt it's a he) uses it to post pictures of women's vaginas.

This seemed odd to me, because there's nothing whatsoever about the domain name that screams, "Porn!" in general, or "Vaginas!" in particular. He posts pictures of other women parts, too, but mainly vaginas. It's a free site, and there is no advertising, so apparently, he's just doing it out of love. Which seems a bit silly, as posting pictures of vaginas is probably one of the few guaranteed ways to make money on the Internet. But hey, it's his website now. He can do whatever he wants. Yay, vaginas.

But this got me thinking about how putting together a website was so much more complicated, say, ten years ago. First of all, domains weren't cheap. I think I paid $40 for mine for one year. Now, companies like Go Daddy sell them for much less. Second, relatively few people knew HTML or wanted to spring for something like FrontPage, which meant that if they wanted to actually do something with their domain, they either had to pay someone to make the site for them, or buy HTML For Dummies. (Which I did, but then you also have to actually read it, and that's the part that tripped me up.) Finally, for most people, there was no reason to go all out on a website in the first place, since if you just wanted a simple homepage, you could sign up with GeoCities or Tripod, where you could post a few family photos, your email address, and maybe some dancing hamsters, which is really all anyone wanted to do in the 90s, anyway.

Now, though, website design is so easy, that I'm thinking about giving it another shot. So far, I have two ideas. The first, I'm not going to mention here, because it actually is kind of a good idea that could conceivably make money. It's an idea for a Twitter-based site that I'll probably never actually getting around to doing anything with, but at least I'll have it in my back pocket for later, should I change my mind.

Here my second idea, though: A website featuring nothing but photos of people asleep on the Metro. There'd be absolutely no money in it, but it always makes me laugh when I see it on the train. People's heads tipped back, mouths open, softly snoring. Or slumped forward, their chins resting on their chests. Or the best, when the train is mostly empty, and they're sprawled out over the entire seat. Actually, now that I think about it, a lot of those people might be drunk, not asleep. But that wouldn't disqualify them from being included on the site.

I think it'd be a fun art project. And I guess if people were willing to pay to have their pictures taken down, it might end up being profitable after all.