One Year Later

In all the hullabaloo over yesterday's impressive 10-4 win over the Tigers, many of you (and by "many" I mean "everyone except me") may have forgotten that today, April 15 2005, actually marks the one-year anniversary of Twins Chatter! That's right: one year ago "Your source for insightful, thoughtful, and somewhat opinionated Minnesota Twins coverage" officially went public (although a little premature linking from Seth put a little scare into me!).

Now one year may not seem like much to any of you, but in the blogging world it actually a notable accomplishment. Blogs are not enterprises that typically inspire longevity; they are "easy come, easy go" endeavors, usually sputtering out within the first few months of existence. While it would be a lie to say that we haven't endured our fair share of bumps in the road, Twins Chatter is still here (and you're still reading this!) so we must be doing at least something right!

A few notable accomplishments from year one:

• We've had over 26,600 people visit in the past year (for a modest average of 73/day). We've also had almost 31,000 "hits" or page views (for a more respectable average of 85/day).


• We've posted on 214 separate occasions.


• Twins Chatter was highlighted in the extensive Star Tribune piece (sorry, the links are all expired now) about Twins blogs that ran back in early October. This photo (I'm the one on the far left) was actually on the front page of the Strib's Variety section on October 5.


• And I would be remiss if I didn't mention the fact that we've been doing some decent writing over the past 12 months. Posts about Blanco's HOF career, Victory Sports, the 2004 draft, Dougie's departure, the ALDS loss, The Battle for the Ring, reelections, spring training, and this interview were some of my favorite posts, and I'm sure John will point out some of his favorites sometime soon as well.

It's been a year of ups and downs for Twins Chatter. We never quite made it into the mainstream Twins-blogging scene (i.e. Twins Geek, AG, and Batgirl status) but I have pretty much accepted that fact and am content with the little corner of cyberspace that we've carved out over the past year. I never quite got around to designing a fresh new look for the site, although we do have our very own logo now (which I am very pleased with). And we've struggled with bouts of inconsistency at times, such as taking almost the entire month of January off as well as two weeks in March.

However, I believe that the writing you'll find at this site today is much-improved over what was here 12 months ago, and in the end, that's all that really matters. Twins Chatter was here before the more recent influx of Twins blogs (many of which were started last fall or this spring) came into being, and I think we'll still be here when they are gone. I'm going to keep plugging away, and John will continue to support me as best he can.

In closing, I just want to thank you all for your continued patronage and I hope you feel it's worth the time you spend at this site every day. As always, feel free to post any comments you may have below and I'll do my best to respond to them.

-Ryan Maus
twinsfan21@msn.com