It seems like yesterday when I wrote this. And yet… Today marks my two-year anniversary with The Huffington Post. What an amazing ride it’s been, especially this past year.
With my Mom and Arianna earlier this week at the AOL offices in New York.
It’s been a year of change. In February, we were acquired by AOL (deal officially closed in March). Around this time, I interviewed Chris Spurlock, the Mizzou journalism student behind a “viral resume,” and was so impressed I helped recruit him to HuffPost. We moved offices and expanded our editorial operations significantly, including the launch of many new verticals and international editions. Some friends have departed along the way, but we’ve kept going. In May, we passed The New York Times in online traffic for the first time, according to comScore. In recent months, we’ve also grown our “social team,” with new faces on both the editorial and tech sides to double down on social media and engagement. We launched new social features in 2011 like Follow, Gift Badges, and Collections. I’ve also learned a lot about interviewing, hiring, and managing people, and now manage a team of 10.
It’s also been an interesting year in terms of news. Lately, I’ve been spending a lot of time at Zuccotti Park and contributing to our live blogs (which got a nice shout recently). I wrote about the conflict amongst Occupy Wall Street protesters (picked up by Fox News and The New York Times). Earlier in the year, we covered the Egyptian protests and Arab Spring relentlessly and it was fascinating to follow that (see splashes here, here, here, here and finally here). I hacked up a comprehensive guide to our Egypt coverage. Other major stories in the past year included a big NASA announcement, Japan earthquake, launch of Google+, and more recently, Steve Jobs’s death.
On the lighter side, I drove a car with my mind, visited an actual Facebook wall, wrote a piece on the trend of people Googling the word Google and spent 2 weeks without Facebook and Twitter in August.
This year has been a year of personal growth as well as company growth, and it’s been a really fun ride. I look forward to the year ahead! Especially with the 2012 Olympics and presidential election right around the corner.
