Holy smokes, VideoSift is 5 years old! In internet time, that makes us about … dead.

I'm very proud that we are still alive as a strong community with a culture and membership that continues to grow stronger over the years. The longevity and success of VideoSift is due to the dedicated people we've attracted here as members - the people who care about the details and put in the time to keep this place tidy, vibrant and very, very human. You know who you are. Big wet kiss to you.

Here are some interesting stats on 5 years worth of data:

Published Videos: 85,357
Comments: 1,073,437
Up votes: 2,967,079
Comment Up Votes: 799,200
Visits: 100,771,243

I'm also proud of the things we haven't done over 5 years:

We haven't sold out to the creeps at Demand Media (that was once a possibility)

We haven't let the community become a pop-up ad farm.

We haven't let the community run on auto-pilot

We haven't allowed spam and self-interest to ruin the fun

We're looking to make some big changes this year. I've mentioned already that we would like to phase out Charter Membership and instead distribute charter rewards among Star levels. We'll post an update on this soon. We're also considering some other changes that I'll be discussing with you all over the next few weeks.

It's just left for me to thank my partner @lucky760 and everyone who has stepped up over the years to shape and guide VideoSift.

VideoSift as a community is as strong as it's ever been, and I expect to be here writing one of these in 10 years. I don't know how it happened, but we're kind of an institution!

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The highest rated (non-admin) comment on this thread after 7 days will receive a VideoSift prize pack from the VideoSift Shop including the fab VideoSift Tee.

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Update: Congrats to @Hybrid for winning the Siftiversary contest with his wildly inappropriate comment. ;-) A VideoSift Tee and a special surprise gift will be winging its way to you soon!