This website, TheAnand.com came to life 10 years ago today.  It has been a exciting journey so far and the world has changed so much!

Reflecting on a few things from the top of my head that have changed drastically since I started on Geocities in 2000s –

• Dial-up internet! (those long cables that ran from the bedroom to living room where the phone was and came out after 11pm? Remember?)
• WordPress had just got into version 2. At 100,000 downloads and just 4% market share. They were called Weblogs? Web Authoring tools?
• MSN and Yahoo! Messengers
• Websites had guestbooks.
• Flash animations on intro pages to websites and animations that followed the mouse pointer!

Much simpler digital advertising times when you just had to buy a bunch of pop-unders, CPM ads to get traffic and we sprayed the whole wall to hit a fly. By comparison, digital marketers today have the surgical precision tools to target the eyes of that same fly!

So here is a thank you to you, my reader and the “internet” for teaching me so much and helping me and many others in so many unforeseen ways. Thank you! Also, a special shout out to a good friend from the Netherlands – King Nomar! (yea, we just had “screen names” back then!).

If you have been a reader of this blog since long, and are reading this post today, please say ‘hi’ in the comments. I want to hear from you! #nostalgic

TheAnand a.k.a Anand Subramanian. 🙂