Gadgetopia

Uh, well, here we are, I guess. Five thousand posts. Huh.

This has been my goal since that first post 1,291 days ago. I posted about The Gutenberg Project back then, back when the site was deanebarker.net. Since then, we’ve managed to post just under four items a day, every single day.

I hope that longevity counts for something. I know we’re no Slashdot or Digg or Kottke or Boing Boing, but we’ve been doing this fully and consistently for a long time now, and there’s something to be said for that.

Five thousands posts has been the goal since I started. So now what? We’re close to 10,000 comments too, so that’s the next milestone. One thousand subscribers in Bloglines would be nice (we’re at 699 as I write this — top 200 would be nice too, but the 200th feed right now has over 3,000 subscribers, so maybe that’s hoping for too much).

I keep wondering how readership of a blog expands. Does it expand incrementally, one reader at a time, or is there a big explosion one day when you get Slashdotted or something? I tend toward the one reader at a time theory, and I try to be a mensch in the hopes that tomorrow, one more person will come read the site that wasn’t here yesterday.

I always get philosophical when we hit these milestones. I keep wondering where the site is going next. Some people have asked for a forum, and there are a bunch of other directions and options, I guess.

But the bottom line is that I’m really good at pretty much one thing — writing blog posts. And while I sit and ponder Gadgetopia’s position in the universe tomorrow, I’ll probably post about half-dozen different things.

And, in the end, maybe that’s just the way it’s always going to be. I can think of worse things.