Oh my, where has the time gone?
Today is the TENTH anniversary of this publication. We’ve been online for TEN YEARS today!
Years ago I started Fabbaloo with only two objectives: to further the amazing technology of 3D printing and to serve as a kind of creative outlet, as I was bored at work. It was a part time venture then, taking only an hour or two a week to deal with. There really was a third objective, and that was to have a lot of fun doing all this work.
Initially this blog required little work because in 2007 almost no one in the general public had heard of 3D printing; it was the realm of some “rapid prototypers” and certain academics. There was very little coverage of the technology, so it seemed like a good idea to help out.
We initially published one or two stories per week, as that was the amount of news available to talk about, and literally no one read them. No one. Zero pageviews.
But over time and thanks to some basic social media work, the pageviews started to appear and then grow. Today we have a very healthy publication that is widely read and even somewhat profitable. We’ve been read in no less than 232 countries, and as you can see in this map, there is almost nowhere on Earth where someone has not read our material.
We’re very happy with how things turned out, and we’re still having fun.
We’ve gradually increased our posting frequency, now around twenty stories per week. We have improved our infrastructure and social media reach. We’ve tried many types of different innovations in our service, some of which didn’t pan out, but some did. We try to do more of things that work and less of things that don’t.
It’s astounding to look back at what’s been done. To date we’ve published over 6,500 stories, and this post is number 6,516. While we haven’t counted explicitly, this likely corresponds to a at least 3.5M words, or something close to 70 NanoWriMo novels.
Today Fabbaloo is a team of several people that provide different skills in addition to just writing, including graphics, infrastructure, marketing and sales. We also have a number of people who regularly contribute to our publication and we thank them all for the incredible help they’ve provided over the years.
Years ago we began to attend 3D printing events, including the now defunct EuroMold and 3D Printshow, but also including Inside 3D Printing, Rapid, FormNext and AMShows. Any 3D printing event is of great interest, not only because of the equipment you can inspect in detail, but also because of the people you meet.
I’ve come to learn there is a special group of people in this world, those that are passionate about the technology of 3D printing. They believe in the technology and do their utmost to make it successful. They may work for different companies and pursue different strategies, but their goals are essentially the same.
We’re very proud to be among them.
Thank you for sticking with us.
