Celebrating the Blog’s 20th Blogiversary (Part 1 of 9)

🎶 It was 20 years ago today…Sgt. Pepper taught the band to blog… 🎶

(Close enough: the actual anniversary was Saturday).

On February 8, 2005, I started blogging here. 🎉🎉🎉 Over the past 20 years:

• this blog has published a total of 4,488 blog posts, including about 3,500 posts from me (the rest are guest posts–I’ll discuss those in Part 7 of the series). I’ve published another 688 posts at my personal blog (a few of those are guest posts).
• the blog has received thousands of comments (2,869 since the blog switchover in 2018).
• the blog has generated millions of pageviews (3.5M since 2018).
• blog posts have ranged from around 200 words to 10,000. I estimate that my average blog post run about 700 words. If so, I’ve written about 2.5M words here myself.
• If each of my posts took me an average of 2 hours to write, I’ve spent about 7,000 hours writing blog posts here. I also spend time editing guest blog posts, doing various non-writing blog administrative tasks, and monitoring various alerts to prospect for blog content. All told, I have probably spent at least 10,000 hours over the past 20 years working on the blog. If I worked on average 2,000 hrs/year (HAH!), the blog would represent roughly 1/4 of my professional time over the past 20 years.

As I’ve said before, I feel like I was born to blog. Despite the heavy time commitment, I rarely feel like blogging is a chore. (Some exceptions: blogging the mind-numbing FOSTA and 512 safe harbor opinions and analyzing proposed legislation. Also, I hate writing posts where readers will need tissues to get through it). If I was forced to stop blogging, I would miss it desperately. I never could have imagined that I would blog for 20 years. But having reached that milestone, I fully expect to keep going for 20 more years or longer (Part 9 of the series will discuss the future).

Over the next days and weeks, I anticipate making a series of celebratory posts (a total of about 10,000 words!):

• Part 1: Celebrating the Blog’s 20th Blogiversary
• Part 2: How Has the Blog Changed Over the Past 20 Years?
• Part 3: Who Reads the Blog, and Why?
• Part 4: Readers’ Favorite Topics, Posts, and Memes
• Part 5: How the Blog Helps Readers
• Part 6: Jess Miers Reflects on the Blogiversary
• Part 7: Guest Bloggers of the Technology & Marketing Law Blog
• Part 8: How Information Consumption Habits Have Changed Over the Years
• Part 9: What Will This Blog Look Like in 10 Years?

As always, the thing I love most about blogging is knowing that readers take time out of their busy schedule to share it with me. Thank you for your readership, and a special thank you to longtime readers who have been on this Internet Law journey with me for years. The blog’s readers are amazing! ✨✨✨

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Coverage of the 20 year blogiversary:

Part 1: Celebrating the Blog’s 20th Blogiversary
Part 2: How Has the Blog Changed Over the Past 20 Years?
Part 3: Who Reads the Blog, and Why?
Part 4: Readers’ Favorite Topics, Posts, and Memes
Part 5: How the Blog Helps Readers
Part 6: Jess Miers Reflects on the Blogiversary
Part 7: Guest Bloggers of the Technology & Marketing Law Blog
Part 8: How Information Consumption Habits Have Changed Over the Years
Part 9: What Will This Blog Look Like in 10 Years?

Coverage of the 10 year blogiversary:

Part 1: Happy 10th Blogiversary!
Part 2: The Blog’s Impact
Part 3: The Blogosphere’s Evolution
Part 4: Changes in Internet and IP Law
Bonus: A Video Interview About the Blog