Blogwise is one today. The past year has gone quickly. Admittedly development of the site has gone a lot slower than I expected, but it IS a hobby so it’s gotten the time that I have to spare, rather than the time I’d like to give it. Anyway, the best news is that I hit 10,000 blogs today – a great achievement imho.
Unfortunately I didn’t get as many hits as I’d hoped for this month (was hoping for 100,000 – got 95,000!) but it’s still up on last month, and every month before, so it’s growing! That said, I did tip 20,000 visitors for the first time this month and have transferred over 5 gigabytes of data (mostly images). I know this is nowhere near the size of the larger sites, Technorati, Eatonweb, etc. but it still makes me very happy inside.
I have been very proud of how well Blogwise has climbed up the ladder though, it’s 15th on the Popdex all-time popular links, eighth on the Technorati Top 100, and is doing quite well on Blogshares (which is down atm 🙁 – it’s also fourth if you search for ‘blog directory’ on Google – which quite a lot of people seem to do.
What’s next? Well, I am definitely committed to developing a more autonomous site, although I still intend to have all sites checked by hand for now. Metadata is going to be playing a very much more important role in the listings (and is already starting to creep in now). I’m also very keen to get logins done asap now – it’s top of my list of priorities, since many other features I expect to roll out will depend on it.
Finally, thanks to everybody who has shown their support for Blogwise – it’s been a great first year and I’m very much looking forward to the second, the third and beyond being even more successful.
