the blog

I got an idea from Con Way Ling, the founder of Xerpi. In November he posted on a web log that "We launched about two weeks ago and already have over a thousand users who have set us as their homepage."

But could Xerpi keep on growing? In the middle of December, I asked Xerpi's marketing director, Jen Yip, who told me that Xerpi was getting even more popular. "Signups have been steadily increasing!" she told me excitedly. "When we first launched in November, we were getting a handful of new signups each day, but now we're getting about fifty new signups each day! And we expect that number to keep growing..."

So what happened in January? Last week I checked in with Xerpi's marketing director again, one month later, and discovered that there was even better news. "We're over that magical 2000 mark," Jen told me — and she seemed even more excited.

And it is exciting to be in on the start of a community. I feel like a pioneer, like someday I'll be telling youngsters about "The early days, back in 2008, when people first started realizing that Xerpi could organize their favorites..." It seemed like such an important milestone, I went on a hunt for Con Way Ling, the founder of Xerpi, to see if I could get his reaction.

And within a few hours, there it was in my inbox. The executive summary? "It's been awesome to see all the users who've signed up for Xerpi in the short time since we launched."

But there's more good news, since counting the total number of members is just part of the story. "What gets us even more excited is that many of our users visit Xerpi 30+ times a day!" Con Way told me. And the statistics are just driving the Xerpi team to create more innovative ways to use Xerpi to organize your favorite sites.

"As the sign-up rate continues to grow, with word getting out, we're going to continue working furiously to bring out new features," Con Way announced, "to make Xerpi the best way to love your favorites!"

I'm predicting that 2008 is going to be a great year. Even though thousands of people have already discovered the joy of the site — Xerpi's going to get even better!