Pseudo.com
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| Private | |
| Founded | New York City 1994 |
| Headquarters | New York, New York, US |
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Key people
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Josh Harris, Founder |
| Website | www |
Pseudo.com was a website for live audio and video webcasting. Founded in late 1993, its parent company Pseudo Programs Inc. filed for bankruptcy following the end of the dot-com bubble in 2000. Its assets were purchased by INTV in 2001. Founder Josh Harris claimed in 2008 that Pseudo was a "fake company" and "the linchpin of a long form piece of conceptual art."
Pseudo Programs Inc. was founded in late 1993 under the name Jupiter Interactive by Josh Harris. It was named after Harris' first company, Jupiter Research, to leverage the established brand name of the market research and analysis firm.
Pseudo programs included a computer animation called “Launder My Head” created by Josh Harris and Jaques N. Tege. Launder My Head was Josh Harris’ version of what future online interaction would be like and served as the genesis of Pseudo Programs Inc.. The computer animation featured a stadium with massive TV screens at the center and cartoonish people with TVs for heads which had the “online users” face being displayed in real-time singing the catchy jingle song “Launder My Head”. This was in mid-1993, before most even heard of “World Wide Web” and there were only two online services at the time (Prodigy and Compuserve) . Armed with the animation and his vision of future online communication along with the clout of Jupiter Communications, Jupiter Interactive landed a contract with the Prodigy online service to revamp their chat room offerings to reflect this avatar driven online chat room experience. At this time online services charged users by the minute; part of Jupiter Interactive's contract with Prodigy was to create and maintain, with full creative control a channel called “Pseudo”, as well as chat rooms on Prodigy for which they would receive a portion of billable hours from users of the Pseudo channel and chat rooms. Shortly thereafter Josh Harris leased the 10,000 sq ft (1,000 m2) 6th floor of 600 Broadway, a depression era sweatshop building in NYC. He built an apartment for himself and two cats in the back and moved Jupiter Interactive.
The Pseudo channel on Prodigy quickly became the most trafficked chat rooms and area on the service. The billable hour revenues generated by the chatters sustained Pseudo for the first two years with the occasional loan from Jupiter Communications to make payroll. The content of this new channel on Prodigy was created for the most part from parties at the company's new offices. After several over-the-top parties at 600 Broadway featuring the cutting edge technologies of Prodigy's online service, like the first progressive streaming audio over dial-up, chat rooms in which you could actually have cyber sex (like a chat room called “married and looking”), and also featuring networked gaming stations playing Doom II, up and coming spoken word poets from the NYC spoken word underground along with the super edgy performance artists and bizarre inflatable art installations. Jupiter Communications kindly asked that the name of Josh Harris' fledgling online entertainment company be changed for fear of being associated with the bohemian online party company. Josh acquiesced and settled on the name Pseudo.
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