Tnooz celebrates its second birthday today - thank you, thank you... please buy any of the team or Nodes a drink some day.
In some respects the second 12 months has been more challenging than the first - making sure we capitalised on the significant impact we made on the market in the first year (without losing the momentum and edge) but also reaching into new areas of the industry and expanding our products.
We always said the challenges of growing a fledgling media startup would be better approached in a more efficient and valuable way when viewed as opportunities, something only possible if the right mindset (determination, hard work, passion) is maintained throughout.
At the editorial end of what we do, Tnooz is privileged to have some of the best, committedreporters, contributing Nodes and guest writers in the industry, adding to the service every single day.
We picked our area of focus wisely.
It is no coincidence that the very subject we write about, travel tech, continues to be at the forefront of how the industry is evolving - whether it's changes to how travel is distributed and the role of the GDSs, to the entry of significant players from outside the industry (that would be Google, you might have heard of them) and how people search, book and manage their travel experience on devices other than a traditional computer.
Whether the industry likes it or not, technology underpins so much of how the sector operates in 2011.
And while it is valid (and we cover this, too) to debate the idea that technology has hit the personal touch of selling travel (in some respects, a shame and rather ironic, given that travel is a very human activity), tech is not going away.
Far from it.
Coordinating this frenzied activity of editorial is often exhausting, but the result is far more satisfying for the team and valuable to the readership than any of us probably could have imagined.
Traffic to the website and enthusiasm by the industry to dive in and work with us on other products alongside existing web advertising, indicates to us that we're doing something right (and probably wrong, too, we're not that big-headed after all and always learn from any mistakes).
Fortunately, behind the scenes (although a bit morepublic nowadays!), Tnooz is supported by a great team, working with more commercial partners and industry associations every week, making sure the site ticks over properly and all the other things a startup needs to do every single day to, well, not just survive but also flourish.
We are glad to say that Tnooz is pointing very firmly towards the latter rather than worrying about the former.
As we hit the terrible twos (a phrase used in the UK - probably elsewhere - to describe naughty infants), there will probably be tantrums along the way (hello PRs) and a few things that do not work quite right, but Tnooz is growing up fast and is now an established part of the media landscape, both the travel business and wider technology press.
At this rate, we might even be toilet trained and sleeping through the night by the time Tnooz hits three.
In the meantime, we have been trawling through the stats since we (breathed a happy sigh of relief and) reached our first 12 months of operations in September 2010 - so here are some of the highlights since then...
Top ten articles by traffic:
Top ten by number of comments:This was also the year we launched Tnooz webinars:...and Tnooz THacks: