2010 at MetaFilter: that's a lot of stats

I've been doing MetaFilter for over 11 years now, and I'm almost always proud to share that with new people I meet that ask me what I do for a living. I get to live out my dream of goofing off on the internet and running websites and it somehow pays the bills. It took many years and lots of work to get there, and it takes even more to keep it going.

About the only time I don't like mentioning it is when I run into an old friend I haven't seen in some time and they ask me what I'm working on lately. "Still doing MetaFilter? Really?" is often the response I get, and I understand it may seem like I'm standing still these past few years given that I haven't launched a ton of new projects (beyond Fuelly, and releasing newish sections of MetaFilter).

A couple weeks ago I figured I'd compile some stats on MetaFilter to let old friends now how much of a monster the project has become. It's a corporation now with employees. We have healthcare and a 401k plan now. Also? It's a shit ton of work to do by hand, for the five people that help keep the site and servers sane. In the past few years I've been contacted by representatives at some major companies sniffing around for acquisitions, but when they find out the moderation and maintenance of the community is all done by hand and we have to talk to thousands of people like grown-ups instead of some amazing whiz-bang python script doing it all for us, the conversation ends and we go back to work.

Thanks to the hard work of Paul Bausch, Josh Millard, and Jessamyn West (and vacapinta!) we compiled a bunch of stats on usage of the site and community contributions for 2010. I threw it into photoshop and started making a monster sized infographic to share these interesting stats in an attractive package. I had to wait for December 31st to get final 2010 numbers, which I plugged in last night and published this morning. Click on the thumbail to see the whole thing.

Thanks as always to the excellent community that make MetaFilter great. Every day I get to wake up to dozens of interesting links and discussions and a handful of amazing questions and answers I thank my lucky stars I get to do this day in and day out.