10,000 posts!

Wow! When I started hiptop Nation, I assumed it would be around for a few months - sort of a temporary diversion put in place until Danger built their own set of moblogging tools for hiptop users. Instead, a vibrant community sprung up, and things got very interesting very quickly, and I knew hiptop Nation definitely had a future - becoming a community project as opposed to *my* project.

It's been wonderful to watch the community grow - and change. From the core techie early adopters, we added the young/urban target market of T-Mobile and most recently we've welcomed international hiptop users from Canada, Singapore, the Cayman Islands and Europe. Not to mention the multitude of users who defy any demographic category - the "regular" folks who simply know fun and useful technology when they see it.

I am also amazed to watch a group of hundreds of active users conduct themselves in such a civil and respectful manner. People here have different political views, backgrounds, and passions - and yet I've never had to step in with the Internet standard-issue "fireproof suit" to douse any flame wars, delete any over-the-top posts or kick anyone off the site. If you participate in any other community sites besides this one, you realize how rare this is, and I thank everyone for making us an exception to the rule.

I was talking with someone about moblogging the other day, and I described what was happening here as people "augmenting life". For the past two years(!) I've been using my cameraphone to capture images and slices of my life that, for the most part, normally would have slipped through my memory by now - as have many others here. Whether you are blogging for yourself, your family, your friends, or the world at large, having a tool that is always on, always with you, always ready to grab a photographic and mental snapshot of your immediate present, changes not only the way you share your world, but also the way you experience your world. Or, at least it does for me.

Often I am asked, "So what's the business model? What's the plan?" Here it is: to keep collecting unique and varied bits of reality from around the world, and meet some cool people along the way. It's been working out so far, and I don't see any reason to change it now.

// mikepop via hiptop * AIM: drjellyfish