On 17 January, 2001, an MIT grad student named Jonah Peretti sent a dozen friends an email detailing his mischievous correspondence with the NIKEiD sneaker-customisation store. His online order, number o16468000, had been cancelled and he’d complained to customer service, even though the word he’d wanted printed on his ZOOM XC USA running shoes — « sweatshop » — was neither profane nor a breach of trademark. « I choose [sic] the iD because I wanted to remember the toil and labor of the children that made my shoes, » Peretti had written back to nikeid_personalize@nike.com. « Could you please ship them to me immediately. »
via How BuzzFeed mastered social sharing to become a media giant for a new era (Wired UK).
