My last post at The Hot Iron, Lower the Minimum Age to Work, was the one-thousandth post I have written for my blog over the almost 15 years since I started it.

I say that calls for acknowledgment and some reflection.

Where It Began

Over the years I have often mentioned why I started and have continued this blog. In short, I had a client of my Web business who asked me to stop building them a Web site and build them a blog first using specific software. After building theirs, I realized I had no “showcase” blog to use as an example to future clients. I had registered the domain name thehotiron.com years earlier, as I thought a play on “strike while the iron is hot” was a good name for a blog. At the end of 2006, what you are reading this from was born.

I slowly got into writing, namely as I wasn’t much of a writer previously. Some posts were things on my mind, others were on what was bugging me, and others were a way to promote myself and my business. Types of posts emerged over the years, such as mobile phone evaluations, book takeaways and What I Learned for the previous week. No matter what I wrote, I tried to contribute something unique to the global conversation. Looking back on random posts as I am writing this, I think I did a good job at keeping to this mission.

1,000 Could Have Been Sooner, Thanks Social Media

There’s no doubt on the impact on social media in the world. A little closer to home, it certainly impacted what and how often I wrote on my blog. Something that was bugging me could easily be boiled down to 120 characters in a Tweet or a little longer in a Facebook post. Over time however those social accounts have gone away or ground down to a halt, as I have preferred to write in longer form in a platform I control. Am I anti-social? No – I certainly do share links on social media to my blog posts. However it’s nice to have my collection of written thoughts in one place, making The Hot Iron the center of my digital presence – something I have written about before and will continue to in the future. Judging by the little bit of observing I do of hits to the blog, others do find me here and keep coming back.

What’s Next

A grand of posts down, another to go? We’ll see, as I stopped making predictions here a long time ago. A little celebration to go along with this reflection... now that’s something that will happen for certain.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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