Exactly 15 years ago, at 12:57 pm PT, Daily Kos went live with the lamest first post ever. Well, maybe it wasn’t lame, in context. But had I known Daily Kos would become what it is today, I might’ve given it a bit more thought, perhaps wordsmithed a little more. As it was, I was testing out this newfangled “blog” thing, and that’s apparently what burst out of my keyboard (on one of those original Bondi Blue iMacs).
Now here we are, 15 years later, 15 years older, 15 years wiser, 15 years more battle-tested, 15 years more cynical, but 15 years more hopeful of where we came from and how far we’ve come.
As an organization, we’ve certainly come a long way. While that first post was written on a Sunday (I went and checked), on a day of a lunar eclipse no less, most of my early blogging was done surreptitiously at work. In fact, that’s where the name came from—I needed something quick and dirty that didn’t out me to my boss, so I went with my Army nickname until I could “think of something better.” I never did. The name stuck.
Today, we just onboarded our 55th employee, with another five in the wings in the next couple of months. We hit nearly 20 million unique visitors on peak months. Tens of thousands participate in the community. Our email list is almost 3.5 million strong. And we’re raising millions for individual candidates. The scale is so massive, so awesome, that I can’t wrap my mind around it. It’s too abstract. And yet … here we are.