Ten years of Boing Boing

Happy birthday, Boing Boing! It's been ten years since Mark posted the first-ever Blogger-powered item to boingboing.net, and it's been a hell of a ride ever since. I literally can't imagine what it would be like to stop blogging today, nor what my life would be like if I hadn't had the chance to post tens of thousands of items here since I came onboard some nine years ago.

55,000+ posts later, I still feel like we've barely scratched the surface of the Internet's inexhaustible supply of "wonderful things." You know, you sometimes hear people talking about how crap everything on the net is (sometimes, they'll add "except all the 'stolen' professional content") and I wonder, "Are these people looking at a different Internet than the one that I get?"

Here's to a decade of Boing Boing, to my co-editors, Mark, Xeni and David, to all our contributors, Rob, Lisa, Brandon and Maggie, our longtime business manager John Battelle, and especially to Ken, Dean and every other largely unsung techie who's gotten out of bed at two in the morning to kick our servers into submission.

And here's to a billion more years of glorious blogging!

First post: Street Tech Reviews and news

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: Culture

More at Boing Boing

Ants and Stars: Bruce Sterling and Jasmina Tesanovic visit the Sardinia Radio Telescope in Italy

The Snowden Principle

Rob Beschizza

If you look at the last archive.org’d page from 1999 and compare to the first one from 2000, you’ll see how it changed from the zine’s website to a blog.
Hawley

i remember when the front page wasn’t covered with ads
i remember when the staff promised they would only add a few ads to cover expenses.
Anonymous

Wow, ten years!???

Amazing… congratulations on keeping it up. I actually first heard from this website from one of my favorite musicians, Eric Avery. It only took a couple of minutes for me to inaugurate my RSS bar with Boing Boing.

Congratulations to all! And thanks for the incredible content.
Anonymous

Hppy Brthdy!
MistaPutz

Many Happy Returns!
Stefan Jones

It seems a lot longer, but then I started off reading the bOING bOING the zine and the early Boing Boing web page.
voided

Congrats!!
Anonymous

Congrats, Boing Boing!

I still remember hearing about The Happy Mutant Handbook a little over 10 years ago and buying it immediately from my university’s bookstore. That really opened my eyes to a lot of cool stuff.

Keep on rockin’…
i_prefer_yeti

Goddamn good work you bastards!
benher

Omedetou Gozaimasu!
voidmstr

Mazal tov!
hobomike

Happy Birthday BB, one of my few daily go-to sites! May you all get wealthy from making us happy!
imag

Man, I don’t know how long I’ve been reading BB – more than 5 years, less than 10. I do know:

- You guys consistently make my day, sometimes more than once per day day.

- I’ve read some incredible books based on your recommendations – thanks!

- I’ve probably forwarded over a hundred links found here to various friends

- You’ve had me and coworkers laughing at the office more than any other… anything… I can think of

- You’ve expanded my awareness of the online and creative issues I care about

- I’ve donated to a bunch of organizations based upon news and/or recommendations noted here

- You have been in many cases a surprisingly great source of quality news

- You address my inner science and science fiction fiend, helping stretch my mind on what the futures will be (I think I read about the Singularity for the first time here)

- You have one of the rare comment sections online that is actually enjoyable to read (go Boingers!)

- Your work has probably resulted in hundreds of millions of hours of “lost productivity” for businesses, and hundreds of millions of “free thinking points” (quoting my own made-up metric) for individuals.

Yeah, so keep doing all that. It’s really good.
minamisan

congrats BB! I gues that means it’s been 10 years since I started reading you too.
Anonymous

Congrats! =)
Itram

Happy birthday!!!!! Thanks for these wonderful years full of news and interesting articles
Laughing Squid

Happy anniversary! Here’s to the next 10 years.
DomoDomo

Reader since 2002, thanks to all the the editors and contributors. You all rock.
Mary Robinette Kowal

Happy birthday! I’ve very much enjoyed the range of political and social topics you’ve made me aware of.
Adam Stanhope

Ever since Firefox appeared on the scene with the feature of making multiple tabs/sites one’s “Home” page, BB has had its own dedicated tab here on my desktop. I have since moved on to Chrome but my tab configuration is the same.

* Salon.com
* GMail
* Boston.com – (local favorite)
* Sadly, No
* BoingBoing
* Facebook

Other favorites have come and gone over the years. BoingBoing is still among the “meat and potatoes” of my online life.

Thank you, Team BoingBoing, for continuing to produce this wonderful site.

Adam Stanhope
Kingston, Massachusetts
- mdh
  
  Remarkable. I’m from 5 miles away and keep nearly the same bookmarks. Have you tried eschaton?
  
  also, congrats BB!
Anonymous

Happy Birthday and thanks for the consistently awesome blogging!
Anonymous

Congrats dudes from Barcelona (Catalonia). I love the stuff you share every day.
jeligula

Kudos and thanks. I promise I’ll read your novel soon.
beecaper

You guys have brought a decade of geeky shimmery goodness. Thank you all.
pencilbox

thank you.
LX

Thanks for those wonderful ten years.

Greetings, LX
Tavie

Been reading since 2001 when Cory posted my LOTR blog review. You guys changed the face of the internet and have educated and entertained me for a decade. I love it. Thanks for everything.
jphilby

Happy, happy BB! May the greatness continue many more decades. Thanks for all the fun!
Anonymous

And it gets more wonderfuller with EVERY POST.
mrshellack

Congratulations!!
You’ve made me a better person

Thanks
MrJM

The Tenth Anniversary of Boing-Boing?

I’ll drink to that!
Boba Fett Diop

Happy Birthday! Happy Birthday!
Brent Finnegan

Best blog on the interwebs. Here’s to 10 more.
IronEdithKidd

Here’s to another 10 years of evolving and adapting an entire inter-web’s worth of Happy Mutants!
Boris Betteroff

Daudz Laimes DzimÅ¡anas DienÄ, BoingBoing! NovÄ“lu tev vÄ“l 1000 gadu dzÄ«vot! Ar sveicieniem no Latvijas!
Happy Birthday, BoingBoing! Wish You 1000 years more! Greetings from Latvia!
bruno boutot

Happy birthday!
Thank you for all the fun I have had through your pages over the years.
Congratulations to everyone involved, especially the gang of 4.

I remember when I printed the whole conversation following your call for suggestions for generating revenues. So many people pitched in. It’s part of Internet History.

And then the knight John appeared on his white horse and it became the gang of 5.
And now this huge media, still growing, still experimenting, and each of yous still curious and passionate, developing other areas of interest, other domains of exploration, other businesses.
This is fun and beautiful.

Congratulations!
10 more years!
malex

What, you aren’t counting the paper Zine years? I loved those! They’re on a honored shelf of my bookcase right now.
Felton

Happy Birthday! Please don’t stop after only a billion more years. :-)
Anonymous

I’m a relative noob, but have come back time and time again since discovering boingboing, so many warm fuzzies with my Happy Birthday wish :)
mack

Like all great publications, you are by turns brilliant and annoying, engaging and meh, very next and occasionally not-again.

If BoingBoing were perfect, I’d hate it. If it were crappy, I’d never visit.

Instead, I plug into its raw, bustling, chockablock pulse several times a day, and it never fails to inform, delight, tickle and challenge me.

Congrats on being relentlessly great and unfailingly vital for 10 solid years. Keep on, mutants, keep on.
link_rae

a truly happy one !
& thanks for everything !!!
David Pescovitz

Thank you all for taking the trip with us!!!
Susannah Breslin

Happy Birthday, Boing Boing! We love you!

XOX

Susannah
steamboat.coat

Yeah, I was only 12 when I bought the Happy Mutant Handbook…it was under the humor section, and boy am I glad it was. Taught me much…
Laurel L. Russwurm

alas I’ve not been hanging about here all that long as i’m a relatively new netizen, but this has certainly become one of my haunts:

hippo birdie 2 ewe boingboing
Anonymous

I looked up Boing Boing on Wayback Machine and the first post entry was actually from 1998…?

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.boingboing.net
Xenu

Thanks, BoingBoing, for helping me be less productive at work!
captaincrossbones

Happy b’day; you should also do a print ‘zine. I’d ‘scribe.
Cowicide

Happy 10th Birthday Boing Boingers!!! Now when are you going to post that great link I submitted 6 or 7 years ago about that cool thing?
Vanwall

Happy Big One OH! Keep up the good work!
Hirsty

Happy birthday Boing Boing and thanks!
Anonymous

You guys rock, Every Day. Thanks. And congratulations indeed!
querent

gratz guys. and i’ll always remember that i first managed to get disemvowled on yer b-day. hehe.
demidan

Happy 10th birthday! I put a Unicorn Pony in the mail, let me know when she gets there!
Ana Medina

My boyfriend turned me on to boingboing and I am thankful for that it is the most interesting and humorous site there is, I read it every morning to start my day…HAPPY BIRTHDAY and thanks mucho
5onthe5

Been reading for…a year maybe? Now I’m hooked. Reading and watching all the wonderful things here could become a full-time occupation in itself.

My ambition is to be a guest blogger some day.
Ugly Canuck

What along strange trip it’s been….
Keep on truckin’!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pafY6sZt0FE
jjasper

Happy anniversary!
razzberry2

‘Twas on your tenth birthday I finally opened an account – to wish you Happy Birthday!
Anonymous

Congratulations folks, you’ve really blazed a new trail that many new publishers have followed. To bricolage!
Pres

Thanks for cheering me up day after day. :-)

P.S. This year don’t forget to celebrate Towel Day! Slashdot remembered, but Boing Boing seems to have forgotten all about it.
Anonymous

I still have print copies of Boing Boing in a sealed bucket. All but 4 of them, I think. Thanks for those early years and everything since. (I always liked Boing Boing better than Mondo2k)
mr_josh

Major w00ts to the cool cats that make up BB. I started reading this blog when it was in its infancy (and I was in high school!) and I will go so far as to say that it really has opened up my mind to a lot of things that I would have otherwise avoided. More than that, it’s encouraged my ideas that the net has so much good in it, even when that good is simply the act of exposing the bad.

Cheers to all, and here’s to many more.
Bill Higgins– Beam Jockey

Congratulations, and thanks for the fun. I’ll continue to provide links when I come across something good.