Five years পূর্বে today, I was sitting in my living room with link, link, and link when together we pressed a button on a keyboard and released ফ্যানপপ to the world. We had no idea what was in store for us অথবা for the site, but we had a dream to build something really cool and we hoped others would like it. For months and months we toiled away at our computers designing and coding what আপনি all see today. We talked endlessly about features and ideas. Papa and I mocked them up and Cliff and Michael programmed them into reality. আপনি grow pretty tight when আপনি spend that many days and nights together. We went from being Fansters to Fanspots and finally launched as ফ্যানপপ on August 1, 2006. We had a small number of test users that had been using our closed beta site but now we were opening the doors to the public and it was scary. What if no one came? What if people hated the site? What if we had to give up and go get ডেস্ক jobs at some office cube farm again? So many "what ifs" overwhelmed us that day.

After our initial launch and some press from sites like link and link the first few months things were pretty quiet and we were honestly pretty scared that it wasn't going to work out. We knew that we had a good product, but we didn't know how to get users to come. Slowly but surely though, the অনুরাগী found their way here. Twilight অনুরাগী came. Harry Potter অনুরাগী came. Justin Bieber অনুরাগী came. One বৃক্ষ পাহাড় অনুরাগী came. স্বতস্ফূর্ত অনুরাগী came. Michael Jackson অনুরাগী came. আরো and আরো অনুরাগী found their way to ফ্যানপপ and before we knew it we had thousands of সংগঠন and millions of অনুরাগী coming to the site. The best part about it was that অনুরাগী around the world were connecting with fellow অনুরাগী who shared their passions and were making new friends. ফ্যানপপ was actually growing into a bona fide community and the ultimate site for fans.

Fast অগ্রবর্তী to August 1, 2011 and today we are the #372 biggest site on the internet according to link. According to our internal metrics we have over 13 million users a মাস around the world visiting Fanpop. But আরো importantly, when I interact with users অথবা read মতামত on our wall, I hear all the time how much people প্রণয় the website and how they really feel at প্রথমপাতা here. It means আরো to the ফ্যানপপ four that we created a place on the web that didn't exist before which people can't live without now. That's pretty special and so are each and every one of our fantastic Fanpoppers. We feel like proud fathers who have watched our little website grow into this amazing network of অনুরাগী সংগঠন which are alive with excited অনুরাগী who প্রণয় to talk about all sorts of topics that we could have never imagined. We know that without all of our awesome and dedicated users, we wouldn't be where we are today. It's the অনুরাগী that make ফ্যানপপ and we will never forget our commitment to আপনি guys. We've spent the past five years building features and designing the website for you. But we're not done yet folks! So keep on Fanpopping, because there's much আরো in store for the years to come!