This Is My 50,000th Techdirt Post, And I'm Busy Working On 50,001
from the milestones dept
So here's a bit of a fun milestone. This blog post will be my 50,000th blog post on Techdirt, which is kind of insane when you think about it. I noticed last year that I was approaching that number and have checked back periodically to see where I was. Last month I realized I was 100 posts away, and have been watching the counter move along until now, the 50,000th post on the site.
For what it's worth, the Guinness World Records folks still claim that the world record for "most prolific professional blogger" was Darren Murph and his measly 17,212 posts for Engadget in 2010. By that time I already had over 30,000 posts, but apparently Guinness is not too concerned about accuracy. In 2014, I had reached out to Guinness just to suggest that their record there was wrong, but rather than investigating the matter themselves, they sent me a huge form to apply for my own record, which would involve a ton of work to "document" all my posts, and, honestly, who the hell has time for that, when there are more blog posts to write.
Anyway, just for fun, I thought I'd link back to some other "milestone" posts, starting with my very first post, which was actually a copy of an email newsletter I sent out in August of 1997. For the first few years, it really was mostly just a newsletter, and I'd take the emails and post them to the website as well. The first "real" blog post to the site came on March 12, 1999, and was about E*Trade launching a corporate venture fund. Exciting stuff, I know. The 10,000th post came on January 2nd of 2003, discussing how American kids weren't texting as much as kids elsewhere (of course, back then we called it "wireless messaging" because "texting" hadn't been invented yet in the old times). The reasoning? More use of instant messaging on computers at home as compared to in other countries (and less use of public transportation). I'd imagine crappy phones had a role as well.
The 25,000th post was in November of 2006 and was about banks acting surprised that insiders were a big data breach threat -- again, not the most exciting of Techdirt fare, but I don't make the rules. I just write the posts. Anyway, given that I got to 25,000 posts by 2006, it's pretty clear that my prolific nature has slowed quite a bit in my later years. Those first 25,000 or so came in about 7 years, and it took another 14 to get the next 25,000 posts. I'm going to have to pick up the pace to get to 100,000 posts.
At least I know I have more than 17,212.
Anyway, a special thanks to everyone who has visited Techdirt over the years, whether you've read all 50,000 of my posts, or this is your first one. It's been quite a journey, and it wouldn't have happened if no one ever read anything I wrote...
