Don’t worry Fanpoppers, we won’t rest on our laurels, because we know that our work is far from done. We have a lot of new features in the hopper to make your experience even better. We listen to you guys and know that to keep these numbers up we have to make sure you’re happy campers.

Another year has flown by and Fanpop turns two years old on August 1, 2008! We launched the public beta site two years ago today and it’s been a wild ride. The site looks so different now than it did when we launched it. This year we spent a lot of time refining and optimizing the site so it could handle the millions of users that hit it every month. Tons of new faces started POPping up across the site as well as POPular new fan clubs like Twilight which came out of nowhere to become one of our most active fandoms.

We launched some really hot new features this past year like Fanpop Chat and the Pop Quiz which has become a huge hit with the users! Not to mention those really cool virtual prizes you guys seem to be collecting more of all the time! We also rolled out the new and improved My Updates which has given Fanpoppers a really powerful way to manage their experience and the fire hose of new content coming from all their spots each day.

We saw the community really come together like never before to pull of some amazing events like the Fanpoppies (congrats to all the winners!) and Fanpop’s Got Talent (Don’t worry papa has not kidnapped me…yet. The team has been overwhelmed by the community of Fanpoppers support over the past two years even during the tough times (images anyone?). But without all of you, we don’t know where this site would be. We wouldn’t have hundreds of mind-blowing movie quiz questions from chel1395 and we wouldn’t be laughing ourselves off our seats from watching amazondebs and cinders video outtakes either. You guys make us smile all the time with your funny comments and encouraging messages to us.

So join the Fanpop Four (as we’ve been dubbed so appropriately) in eating our virtual birthday cake and here’s to another fantastic year of Fanpoppery!

Amusingly, the lowest bidder has offered to build the Fanpop Clone for $500 in 10 days.

Today marks of our 1-year anniversary of launching Fanpop! That’s right folks, it was one year ago today that we pressed the button and unleashed Fanpop to the world wide web. And since then, we’ve had millions and millions of people come to the site. It’s been great because we’ve gotten to know so many of you through the community. Whether it be in a fun forum game like A-Z in Heroes or a heat Picks debate about vanilla vs. chocolate, we’ve really bonded with our users over the past year.

We’ve really been encouraged by all of your messages and comments to the team. One of the biggest reasons we keep chugging along and working so hard on making Fanpop a great community site is because of your kind words. But what really bowled the team over was amyfitz‘ soapbox article titled You Know You’re Crazily Addicted to Fanpop When…. Not only was it hilarious, but it made us believe that we must be doing something right when cool folks like Amy and other users comment about how much they love the site. I sometimes go back just to read the article and comments again to remind myself that you all are why we get excited about doing what we do each day (and then I grab my box of tissues because I get so choked up!). The community keeps growing and growing each month and if we keep getting users as awesome as the ones we have now (adding images, writing soapbox articles, uploading videos, giving props, starting forum games, etc.), then we’re in for another really great year of Fanpopping! Thank you to all of you users who make the site so darn good.

During the week, Papa and I often work from a cafe here in San Francisco while Michael and Cliff work from home down in the South Bay. We tried out a bunch of places with free wireless a la Hotspotr. We started off at the place where all of the new startups in San Francisco seemed to be going called Ritual Roasters in the Mission. That got too crowded and there were also stories in the news about people getting mugged in cafes at knifepoint for their laptops (especially shiny ones with glowing Apple logos like Papa and I use!). I tried a few others like The Grove Cafe in the Marina and Axis Cafe in Potrero Hill. But we finally decided that the best place for us was Canvas Cafe in the Inner Sunset next to Golden Gate Park near Papa’s house (and where I lived back in the day).

The key to a good working cafe are:

1. Character and charm – You don’t want to be sitting at a cookie-cutter cold Starbucks or a place that doesn’t have a local feel to it. The best places are those that have cool furniture, colorful walls and decor, and fun staff.

2. Good music – If you’re going to be sitting at a place for hours and hours, the last thing you want to have to endure is crappy music or music that’s too loud and distracting.

3. Mixed crowd – It’s nice to have a diversity of people wherever you work because when you start daydreaming (not that I ever do), you can people watch. San Francisco is such a diverse city that it’s always fun to see all the eclectic types that make this city so wonderful to live in.

4. Tasty food and drinks – A cafe isn’t a cafe unless they have quality munchies and can make a mean latte.

We finally found our home at Canvas Cafe, which had all of these qualities only to find out that it was closing forever on April 29th (I have mixed feelings because it’s turning into a Pacific Catch, one of my favorite seafood joints in the Marina). The great part about Canvas was that it was a very neighborhood joint where local artists and musicians could display their talent. There were all kinds of people there from students to families to startup guys like us. But alas, all good things must come to an end. We will miss you Canvas.

Now Papa and I are nomads once again and looking for a new home. Any suggestions?

Alrighty then! It looks like I’ve managed to stick with tradition and failed at keeping my new year’s resolution to post more often to this blog. Sigh. Things have been pretty busy around the “office” while we chug away for the sake of our users. Lots of great new users are joining us all the time like bSd and Archie. We aim to please, so we hope you like what we’re working on. Tonight is another hot new episode of Heroes. There are a bunch of sneak previews and a behind-the-scenes clips in the spot. The Office (US) Spot continues to grow as our top spot with almost 500 fans. Tons of new deleted footage added by sfdude and bSd that are hilarious. I’d highly recommend checking those out for some good laughs especially if you’re a fan of the show. This past weekend in sports it looks like Tiger Woods won his 7th consecutive PGA Tour title while Roger Federer won his 10th Grand Slam at the Australian Open. We are fortunate enough to be seeing two of the possibly greatest athletes in their respective sports of all time. And finally, this Sunday, a battle of midwestern titans as the Indianapolis Colts battle the Chicago Bears in the Super Bowl down in Miami. Should be a fun game with lots of new legendary ads.

Happy 2007 Fanpoppers! 2006 was a big year for Fanpop! We created a company, built a team, and launched a website all in 2006. If you told me in 2005 that I would be running a company that was building a really fun and cool website that would be used by millions of people all over the world by the end of 2006, I would have probably either laughed at you or asked if you were feeling well. I still can’t believe it myself sometimes. You like us, you really really like us! We’ve gotten so much encouragement and positive feedback from our users that we can’t wait to see what 2007 has in store for us. What I do know is that one of my New Year’s resolutions is to actually update the Fanpop company blog more regularly! For those of you who still read this, we appreciate it. The goal of this blog was to communicate and build relationships with our users. We’ve already connected with many of you through personal messages, comments and in forums across the site. Our favorite new users are chunkyrice13, pirateroro and loner614. You guys rock!

Lots of new spots being added lately with the new year arriving and new products and shows on the horizon.

Courteney Cox’s new show on FX, Dirt, is going to be a winner I think. It’s about the seedy underworld of Hollywood and the paparazzi. I watched the first episode and thought it was pretty unique and edgy. Very Nip/Tuck, which I’m a big fan of. Another new show is Grease: You’re the One that I Want, on NBC which should be a lot of fun for all you Grease fans out there. A few other shows will be returning to the television lineup as well like the long awaited Season 6 of 24 and the new season of American Idol and the Apprentice. The big news this week was the Apple announcement of the iPhone and David Beckham signing to play soccer in the US for the Los Angeles Galaxy. Pretty exciting week!

Hopefully I’ll be able to stick with this resolution, unlike so many other failed resolutions in past years. If 2007 is anything as insanely fun and crazy as 2006 was, then I’m in for a wild ride. Stay tuned for some exciting developments on Fanpop!

Another person’s writings and advice that inspired me was Guy Kawasaki, the managing director of Garage Technology Ventures and the chief evangelist for the Macintosh at Apple Computer. His blog, Signal Without Noise, was a constant source of entrepreneurial wisdom and guidance. The thing I loved about his book, The Art of the Start, and blog was how real and matter of fact they were. He calls bull shitake when he sees it. He cuts through all of the fluff and got right to the point. His down-to-earth Hawaiian personality was clearly evident throughout his writing. It was so refreshing to hear such honesty and candor. Check out this keynote speech he gave that gives you and idea of how cool this cat is.

I started an email exchange with Guy last month and this past Monday Guy was nice enough to invite me to breakfast. Needless to say, I was a little nervous about meeting him! All those fears were allayed right away when we started comparing notes on our Motorola Qs within the first minute of meeting. It’s always nice to meet a kindred spirit. We talked about a lot of stuff, but eventually he wanted me to give him a demo of Fanpop. He was impressed with what he saw and posted a “reality check” about Fanpop on his widely-read blog. Digg it! We’ve gotten a ton of traffic from the post and hopefully I’ll get to see Guy again real soon.

Some of my favorite heroes in recent months have been some of our passionate users. One that stands out in particular is Joshua Olson. He joined Fanpop as monkeypup and instantly just “got it”. He reached out to us with some constructive feedback that was almost a carbon copy of our product plans along with some other really good suggestions. It was amazing to me that a user would go to the trouble to write such detailed suggestions! But it was obvious to me that he liked the site and wanted to make it even better. I really admired his passion and commitment to things he believed in regardless of what he got in return. Joshua posted this awesome blog entry about Fanpop. But he really blew me away when he offered to spruce up our pathetic MySpace page and start a Fanpop campaign via MySpace because he loved the site so much. I personally think MySpace is garbage and the UI is horrendous which made me throw up a little at the thought of even having to go back there. I never thought I’d use the words beautiful and MySpace in the same sentence, but Joshua worked his magic and converted the ugly default template into a beautiful MySpace profile for Fanpop. I could hardly believe it myself, but he pulled it off and for that we are grateful to him. If we could have even a handful of users as dedicated as Joshua, we just might make it in this crazy web world.