Happy 5th Birthday!

Today marks five years of posts on this site. Way back on this date in 2008, I was watching a Cheers rerun while surfing Monster.com, Craigslist, and the like for a job. I was a few months out of grad school and a few weeks from landing a job as a researcher. A lot has changed over the past half-decade, and we went from 89 posts in the first year to closing in on 1900 over the past four years. Not every article you read is from me anymore, as we have three other writers with various specialties - and our cartoon guy has recently returned!

I remember a lot of firsts. I remember the first time over 100 people hit in a single day. I remember when I had a solid month of 100+ hits every day. I remember the first time I got 1,000 hits in a day. I remember the first time I had 30 people on the site at the same time. I remember the first time someone sent me a link to something where TheTalkingBox was quoted. I remember the first time a publicist reached out and offered me exclusives in exchange for publicity. I remember my first screeners. I remember the first time someone else in "the biz" contacted me about growing the site. I remember the first month we had a hit from every state in the US.

We've had 600+ posts that aren't recaps and remarks, and a few make the list of Our Ten Most Popular Posts of All Time, though most of those slots belong to the articles folks search for to find out what happened and what we thought about various episodes. Let's take a quick look at the posts in that list...

Deal or No Deal
Who's Who on Season Three of Cake Boss' The Next Great Baker 
Giveaway: Hunger Games Poster! 
Futurama: October, Germany, and Neanderthals
New Competitions: Bridalplasty & The Next Great Baker
Hot in Cleveland: Meet Joy's Grandson 
Next Great Baker: Final Predictions
Favorite Episodes: Roseanne
NEW SHOW: Abby & Brittany
Cake Boss: Car Cake for Danica Patrick

The biggest surprise? Half of those posts are about shows on TLC, a network that covers a very wide variety of programming, with dozens of shows we never cover.

When I started, I didn't think about where this site would be in five years. Now, it's still tough to imagine what might change between now and 2018, but we hope to be here and doing even more!

Rather than list more accolades and milestones, I'll just throw out another THANK YOU, especially to the readers who never come to the site but read loyally over various means (like Google Currents!), and hope that you choose to celebrate our birthday by passing on a favorite article to a friend.