Happy Birthday!
It’s been one year since we launched BallHype! Quite a year for sports and sports bloggi
ng, and we’re happy to have been a part of the action. We recognize that without the support of loyal users, bloggers and non-bloggers alike, BallHype (and now ShowHype) would be a much less interesting place to visit. So a big thank you to everyone who visits and contributes to the sites!
And now, cue the theme music for a walk down memory lane… Since we’re computer geeks, we’ll throw in a few 1’s and 0’s.
April 2007 - BallHype launched our public beta on baseball’s opening day, after two months of closed beta testing with a couple hundred users.
May - The first high-volume story to grace BallHype was the video of Baron Davis dunking on Andre Kirilenko, which later won the Posterization of the Year award.
June - Blog claiming begins to take hold, with 180 claimed blogs by the end of the month. Today half of the tracked BallHype blogs have been claimed by their owners.
July - kcudah posted his 1,000th story to BallHype. He’s now at 4249 stories, and our next top contributor, ric-s, has posted 3020. We’re hugely grateful to them and to all of the other fans who scour the internet to share breaking news and entertaining videos.
August - Our mission is to make it easy for users to get to the best sports (and entertainment) content on the web. In August, we marked the 1,000,000th click from BallHype to another sports web site.
September - 100,000th story posted to BallHype. We allow users to share articles or videos, but we also create stories automatically when our tracked blogs link to videos or stories.
October - ShowHype, our foray into the world of entertainment, launched. The top story of the day was an in-depth profile of David Simon. One of the best things about ShowHype has been the ability to track all things The Wire for the past 6 months, although Comcast On Demand (grrr) made avoiding spoilers tricky.
November - 10,000th video posted. And BallHype’s beta period officially ended with a new site design that generated a bit of … ahem… discussion.
December - 1,000,000th blog post analyzed. Today we track more than 2200 sports blogs and 1300 entertainment blogs. I am now in danger of spending way too much time reading online instead of working… Wait, that is my job–nice!
January – Big news months for both sites. In sports, you had the Santana trade, the NFL playoffs, the Jazz having a bit o’ fun, and Chris Berman outtakes. In entertainment, you had breakdowns by Britney and Amy, Heath Ledger’s tragic death, and celebrity baby crazes.
February - 1,000,000th page published between BallHype and ShowHype; we upgrade to better, faster, more expensive servers.
March – 3 million page views across both sites. And what better way to end the year than with Bush’s warm reception at the Nationals’ season opener.
Thanks again to everyone who supported us this year by getting the word out, visiting the sites, and sending us feedback. We love hearing from you so keep telling us what we’re doing right and how we can improve.
Here’s to the Terrible Two’s!
Congratulations Erin, Jason and Ballhype! Happy birthday!
Thanks Louis! We’ve really appreciated your support - and we’re looking forward to having the twins at the top of the game picks leaderboard in 13.5 years (in case our lawyer is reading this).
Congrats! Funny, I’ve actually gotten nasty emails about spoilers (regarding a certain Harry Potter boook)….
Zorgon seems to be sticking around afterall! BallHype, where satisfied customer happens.
Congrats on Ballhype’s birthday. Whatifsports.com is proud to be a part of Ballhype.
Gabe - I’ll assume it’s wesmirch that’s picking up on The Deathly Hallows, not techmeme… although tech bloggers are surprisingly well-rounded.
Hype - the rose-colored glasses helped.
Whatifsports - thanks, nice to be working with a veteran in the sports social media space.
Pretend I’m sending you a big birthday poster with different candy bars attached to it: Jason & Erin, I thought you two were “Air Heads” for leaving your full-time jobs, but now I see that you are “Smarties” and “Nerds” (in a good way) because the “PayDay” from your website may someday exceed “100 Grand”! You produce “Extra”-special content and I love catching the “Skor” of my favorite games on your site. Here’s hoping Year 2 is “Mounds” of fun with lot of Chris Berman “Snickers.” Ballhype is the best sports website “BarNone”, both “Now & Later”.
P.S. How about a little more coverage on “Rolo”-blading?
If I had only one blog to visit every day, BallHype would be it! Happy birthday, and wishing it many more!
Gurd - I love Skors! And we watched Blades of Glory this weekend. Expect to see men’s pairs ice skating up there soon.
Ryne - thanks for the kind words, and for the awesome videos.
Belated happy birthday!
Happy late birthday.
Those are some huge accomplishments. This is a great site. I think the whole blogging community owes you a debt of gratitude. I hope you have continued success!