Ten years of Fwoosh?!
I wasn’t there at the very beginning (so few were, as you will see), but when I started lurking in 2003, I had no idea that almost a decade later I’d still be here. We’ve gone through a lot, building this community. Behind the scenes, we’ve done a bunch of forum upgrades. We always ended up breaking something, but one particularly painful upgrade resulted in our Crisis on Infinite Fwooshes – in the process we lost a whole bunch of posts. And our biggest concern? Post counts. 🙂
And then there was the hack – we lost everything, including our domain. We contacted the internet police in 2 countries and the FBI, but never got it back. Sometimes the bad guys win.
But we came back stronger, and built the E-Zine. At first, we just wanted to see if we could use it to get into San Diego Comic-Con as press. (It worked!) But since then, it’s turned into a real thing, and we put in a new platform (surprisingly little pain) and have started dipping our toes into social media. And after 10 years, we’re thinking about how to build out the Fwoosh Network, to expand our horizons to encompass more of the Fwoosh pop culture.
But I didn’t set out to write out our history. Here’s a quick look at the Fwoosh in 2002 stacked up against 2012.
A lot has changed…
| What | Then (2002) | Now (2012) |
|---|---|---|
| Registered Fwooshers | 13 | 14,999 |
| Domain address | http://www.fwooshnet.com/ Don’t click – hackers still have it! |
http://www.thefwoosh.com/ So much better, right? |
| Pageviews per year | What’s a pageview? | Nearly 17 million! |
| DC toy licensee | Hasbro | Mattel |
| Marvel toy licensee | Toy Biz | Hasbro |
| Fwoosh moderators with sexy beards | One Robokillah |
Three and a half Robokillah, carl, Prodigy, and SamuRon |
| New superhero movie franchise | Spider-Man | The Amazing Spider-Man |
| Hottest new superhero toy line | Marvel Legends | Return of Marvel Legends |
| Best Marvel Legends figure | Captain America (Steve Rogers) | Captain America (Bucky Barnes) |
| Hardest to find Marvel Legends variant | Unmasked Wolverine | Masked Dark Wolverine |
| Number one Fwoosh complaint | No 6-inch DC figures | Death of 6-inch DC figures |
| My action figure Holy Grail | Jitsu (MOTU 200X) | Jitsu (Masters of the Universe Classics) |
… Or has it? 🙂
Thanks for Fwooshing!
PS – Just make him already! I’m talking to you, Toy Guru!
