5 Year Blogiversary and the Downfall of TallSkinnyKiwi

UPDATE. June 3.
Hey - HAPPY BLOGIVERSARY to TallSkinnyKiwi. 5 years. Thanks for stopping by today and also for being a part of my life and this blog. Thanks also for your comments over the years that have made this an interesting ride.

Here is how my blog looks when i graph it.

Some of those dots are you guys.

This year I want to give an account of my 5 year downfall from blog celebrity (Number 3) to serious blogger (Number 381) to just another blogger (numbered in the thousands). This sounds like Donald Trump's Downfall but without the Art of the Comeback sequel.

TallSkinnyKiwi at Blogspot (2001 - 2003)
1078 posts
How many hits? Probably an absolute infinitissimal astronomical number never before seen displayed on a computer screen. The kind of number that dumbfounds mathematicians and explodes calculators, a number so high that even God himself had to write it down so he could remember it when it came time to chat about blogs among the angels and heavenly creatures. A number unknown to me because either;
a) God decided to keep me humble and the earth safe by hiding my page view count, or
b) because i did not have a hit counter (an egotistical tool of the devil), or
c) I did not count because it may not have been nearly as many as I thought, thus dealing a humiliating blow to my manhood

But enough hits were registered to get it rated Number 3 Blogspot blog one week, beating the Iraq blogs, beating "Where is Raed?" and even leaving in the blog-dust the venerable Dave Barry, who I once met at Powells Bookstore in Portland Oregon with my friend Chip MacGregor. Well, not really "MET" . . I heard him speak . . from a distance. He probably SAW me in the crowd. Maybe.
As for the rumor that Dave Barry is still licking his wounds after his momentary defeat and installed a tall skinny dartboard on his wall with my face on it . . . I would say that is a rumor that cannot be verified and was probably started by some insecure blogger with a grudge.

And then I decided to leave blogger and move on to a more sophisticated system. Moving to Typepad from blogger meant that i lost all my links and my success and stardom and had to start again from the beginning, which probably wasn't a very smart thing to do. But i did it anyway. It took me a while to build up again and I found the brave new blogosphere filled with millions of bloggers and the hard truth was that i was no longer part of an elite group but actually just another blogger.

TallSkinnyKiwi at Typepad (2004-2006)
710, 042 page views
1553 posts
7875 comments
691 trackbacks
1,593 links from 524 sites (Technorati)
Rated 2,605

See that rating. Only six months ago it was more like 381 on Feedster Top500. Now I have PLUMETTED down to the hoi polloi of blogdom and there are THOUSANDS of blogs more popular than mine. 2,605, actually. But whose counting???? I am now a mom'n'pop blog amidst skyscrapers.
Not only that. But there are also many more Andrew's on the internet and now my first name has been pushed back to page 6 of Google.

But anyway - didn't mean to throw a web blanket on my blogiversary. Whats great is that many of you are running better and more interesting blogs than mine and even more of you are allowing yourselves to be more vulnerable and real than I ever was. Fantastic - I need to learn from you. And if there is anything I can do to help you get beyond me, then please let me help you.

So lets move forward together in this relatively new genre of whole life blogging.
Lets resist the temptation to bump up our popularity by blogging on topics that stimulate the greatest hits.
Lets allow the overflow of our abundant lives to flow into our abundant blogs. For God's sake.

so . . . lets play a few games.
_______________________________

ORIGINAL POST: - May 29.
June 3rd marks 5 years of clumsy blogging at Tall Skinny Kiwi. Should be a good time.
I will tell some boring stories of the early blogging years among the handful of JesusFreaks that were blogging back then. and I have some stuff to give away. actually, I am trying to download the whole blog and create a PDF - but am not successful yet. Pagesucker and Webdumper are ignoring my typepad blog. Any ideas?

Comments

[billy]

Sweet!

[ally simpson]

oooooh gifts............hehe i must stop by! 5 years man,, congrats on your patience, tenacity and always worth a read posts...........the only blog i ALWAYS check man. God bless your cotton socks

[jon stegall]

wow thats cool. june 3rd is my birthday. very cool.

[Adam]

I just had my 1 year blogiversary.

5 years is certainly worthy of some celebration!

[Existential Punk]

Congrats, Andrew! I just celebrated my one year blogiversary in April. You are one of the few who inspired me to begin blogging. Thanks! Hope i make it to 5 years! Adele

[jonah]

Have you tried sitesucker? I had a typepad blog and sitesucker at least downloaded all the pics n text.

As well, have you tried looking thru all the export options provided by typepad?

Don't forget that all apple apps have the capability to print to a PDF file. You could turn off archiving in the typepad control panel, make your entire blog one long page, and try and print to a PDF file... It would be hugeish in size, but it should work, pics and all.

Good luck and happy anniversary!

[timsamoff]

Five is a good milestone. Keep it up! :)

[Andrew]

Just in case I forget to drop by on the actual date: Happy Anniversary to the blog.

AC
at four years and counting

[Deb]

Congratulations!

blogbinders.com might be worth checking out.

[ScottB]

Do you have the ability to edit templates? Create an archive template that doesn't have a "lastn" criteria in the MTEntries tag. (I'm assuming typepad works like Movable Type?) Save and publish the template - it should generate one ginormous page with every entry ever. Print to pdf. Done and done.

[Shawn Anthony]

Wow! 5 years of blogging! Incredible. I'm only approaching year one. LOL. Keep up the great writing. Congratulations!

[John Lunt]

Congrats on five years. Your blog has been a real influence.

[Rodney Olsen]

Well done on the 5 years. I've only been at it for just over 2 and a half years.

I'd say that it's quality not quantity that matters, but dammit, you beat me there too.

Congratulations.

[Roy]

Happy Blogversary, dude. When you get to the pearly gates I don't think God will judge by the number of hits, but how many people you influenced for the good.

[steven]

Thanks for the years of inspiration, laughter, and deep thoughts that you've provided electronically across oceans and continents! Keep it up, and Happy Blogiversary!

[Existential Punk]

Instead of "Deep Thoughts With Jack Handy", it's 5 years of "Deep Thoughts With Tall Skinny Kiwi"! CONGRATS and much appreciation for your words of wisdom, incite, humour, and all other thins TSK! Here's to another 5 years and beyond . . .

[julie]

happy blogiversary to you !!

[Toby Taff]

Happy blog-o-versary Andrew! I wonder if part of the fall from web hit prominence is because you are a must read everyday and therefore on the aggregator. I know that's me, so the only time I come to the site is to post comments, where I used to come here daily.

[John Lunt]

Congrats on five years - half a decade - a true pioneer.

[Goyo in Nicaragua]

Felicidades en este dia especial...el quinto anniversario de su blog!!!

Dios le bendiga...

[Mike Morrell]

A well-deserved congrats, Andrew. You have my absolute favorite 'blog...I read it and comment on it more than any other.

[Alan Cross]

You're the Steve Jobs of blogging! You helped get it all started, but then got pushed to the side. But, you know what happened to Steve Jobs? He got brought back because he was the innovator, the man! Every downfall needs a comeback! How will you continue to innovate in the future? Even if you don't, I still love your blog. Happy Blog-Birthday!

[Jon]

Here's the audio to accompany the graph above! Hoorah!

[Andrew Dowsett]

Happy anniversary! Thank you for pioneering for us, for inspiring us, for encouraging us. Know that you are much loved, and much prayed for.
Andrew

[richard]

happy anniversary andrew.

not sure if another commenter has pointed out yet that according to wikipedia this is the one where we give you gifts of 'wood' - or if we're being modern then 'silverware' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedding_anniversary )
I'm not very modern though so here's a gift link from me (http://www.woodmagazine.com)

btw well done! brilliant! fantastic work! etc, etc