VideoSift is 2 years old today - since I'm the only one who has been here from the very, very beginning- I'd like to take a little trip down memory lane.

How did VideoSift Start?


Probably as a side-effect of TV withdrawal symptoms. I used to work for a satellite TV company and in the words of Pink Floyd- we had 96 channels of shit on the TV to choose from (for free). Then I chucked the corporate job, sold the house and took the family on an around the world trip for 5 months- blowing all of our money - but having a lot of fun. Call it a mid-life crisis, but at least I took the family with me.

We haven't had a TV since then, the kids are better for it- and though I whinge, I probably am too - and would not have poured my energies into VideoSift otherwise.

The first VideoSift ran on the venerable open source CMS Pligg. Although Pligg is a nicely packaged, well-supported collection of scripts- I made a dog's breakfast of it- adding features, rankings and bells and whistles until it was a mess of spaghetti code. That's where Lucky came in - but I'm getting ahead of myself.

I launched VideoSift on Metafilter Projects. I was an active member of Metafilter and thought that it was an online community done right- a weak administration, good communication and lot's of community involvement. Although we didn't copy any of the interface or look and feel of MeFi, I would say we pirated the culture blatantly.

James came on board about 4 or 5 days after the launch of VideoSift, I think he found VideoSift and posted about it in his blog- and that's how we met. Traffic, and support requests were starting to roll in, and I was asleep during the prime time- it worked well to have someone awake around the clock.

There were lots of changes (hacks) that happened in the first six months. Sift Talk was born a couple of week after launch. Star points and member rankings came shortly after.

The next few months saw the launch of VideoSift Poland by Ender. It's still going strong -though we've forked quite a bit- and VideoSift.pl is still on Pligg. Regardless, it was neat to see VideoSift go international - and we got a lot of help and resources from Ender and Lukasz.

Lucky came on board in 2006 and at this point- everything took a massive lurch forward. Suddenly Siftbot invocations worked instantly, instead of taking an hour to respond- and innumerable improvements and changes bubbled through the site like Lucky's special pixsy dust.

The original VideoSift layout was military green with orange highlights. I'm not sure what I was thinking- but there was a certain homely charm to it. Together with team Poland, we began plotting a big change to the way VideoSift looked. Lukasz created a layout that was completely different, and mostly similar to our current blue design.

At the end of 2006, we got a very nice accolade from PC World. We were named one of the world's most useful sites. Yes, useful- not time wasting! (ahem)

2007 brought lots more changes- the biggest one being our move from Pligg to Lucky's own custom built VaroCMS, custom designed for the way VideoSift works. This was a huuuge change- and a huge amount of work for Lucky. It was a little bit of a bumpy start, but I couldn't be more happy with the way it's turned out.

Probably the biggest change in 2007 was just the massive growth of the community. It was a creeping thing, but by the end of last year, VideoSift passed 1 million visitors a month- that small group of friends feeling turned into - "wow- there's a 24 hour party going on here". All of the extra people has been, I believe, a net good. That doesn't mean there haven't been problems. Sometimes we make mistakes on both the technical and people side. None of us majored in online community management in college- and we've had our share of foul-ups and regrets.

I don't know what the next year will hold for VideoSift. We're hoping to stay an alternative to the big video sites- but it's a bit harder to be the edgy underdog when we feel kind of like a Big Deal™. Whatever happens, I'd like to take this chance to thank everyone in the community. Those of you who have been here from the very beginning- and everyone since. We recognize that VideoSift is very much a collaborative effort - and we wouldn't be here without you all. It's hard to keep that "small group of friends" feeling- but I'm going to try my best to hang on to it.