Online Site URDB Takes on Guinness World Records

Offbeat world records for everything from Most Giraffe Tattoos on a Shoulder to Most Bananas Fit Inside a Pair of Pants While Wearing Them are being created on urdb.org

Illustration by Asaf Hanuka

By Dana Rubinstein

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For Mike MacDonald, an interest in ungulate mammals was less important than everlasting glory. During a 2009 San Diego radio broadcast, the 29-year-old Web developer had a tattoo artist ink three giraffes onto his left shoulder, thereby setting a world record for Most Giraffe Tattoos on a Shoulder. While MacDonald had successfully beaten the record set by Australian Daniel Fowler, his triumph was fleeting. Beaten but not cowed, Fowler struck back 3½ months later, adding three tattoos on his shoulder—thereby setting a new new world record, of four giraffe tattoos on a shoulder. "As long as I am the man with the most giraffe tattoos on a shoulder," Fowler says, "I will die a happy man."

Guinness World Records does not a have a category for most giraffe tattoos on a shoulder. Instead, MacDonald and Fowler battled for the title through a website that's threatening to usurp the London-based behemoth's 56-year hegemony of the world-record industry: the Universal Record Database (urdb.org), the superlative compendium of the Information Age. "Our spirit is pure democracy," says Dan Rollman, 37, the Canadian-born, Brooklyn-dwelling co-founder of the site. "We take the power of the Internet, democratize world records, and create an online space where anybody can set a new world record."

Rollman has record-breaking in his biology. At 6 feet, 7 inches, his all-time-favorite Guinness superstar is the late Robert Pershing Wadlow (1918-40) who, at 8 feet, 11.1, set the record for the tallest man to ever live. After coming up with the concept for an antiestablishment online record-keeper in preparation for the 2004 Burning Man festival—the annual drug-infused cultural orgy held in Nevada's Black Rock Desert—Rollman has held multiple titles, including Longest Hand Coo (24.64 seconds), Most Bananas Fit Inside a Pair of Pants While Wearing Them (60), and Most Times Whistling Happy Birthday in One Minute (16). Although his feats have long since been eclipsed, the world-record mogul appreciates the ambition of his peers. "Everybody wants to feel they have something new to bring to the table," he says.

Since officially launching URDB on a shoestring budget in 2008, Rollman and his co-founder, Corey Henderson, have built the company into a 12-employee operation based in lower Manhattan. URDB now has 10,000 registered users—many with little patience for traditional world-record bureaucracy. "It's opened up the playing field," says Matt Kelly, a 23-year-old social media consultant from Brisbane, who co-holds the world record for Longest High Five. (Kelly and a partner covered a distance of 4.2 kilometers with their hands in the air before consummating the high five). "The everyday Australian can go out there and break a record right now. It's extremely difficult to do that with Guinness." Rollman says he has raised between $500,000 and $1 million and is in a second round of seeking seed money.

URDB's greatest success so far, however, is in generating buzz from ridiculous marketing stunts. A company event—replete with live music and the setting of new records—drew nearly 1,000 spectators earlier this month at the SXSW festival in Austin, Tex. Later in March, Toyota will hold a live-streamed, record-setting palooza in Los Angeles called Prius Records, where hybrid enthusiasts can challenge 200 world titles. (Jet Blue (JBLU) and Saucony have also paid URDB to stage similar publicity-generating events.) Rollman has already appeared six times on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon after being discovered by segment producer Jim Juvonen, the former world record holder for the Longest Suspension of Tape Measure While Standing on One Foot. Rollman parlayed the appearances into a game show pilot for NBC, and this fall Workman will publish the first of two URDB record compilations. "We're seeing significant revenue from brand partnerships and media deals," says Rollman. "We anticipate being profitable within 12 months."