Happy 8th birthday ScubaBoard!

[Ted S]

ScubaBoard was first turned on to the public on July 13th, 2000, 8 long years ago. It’s amazing that yet another year has gone by [geeze time does fly] and to see just how far the site has grown both in the past 12 months and in 8 years. Congratulations and thank you to the current SB team for another great year, to the owners for leading the site to where it is and into the future and most of all thanks to all the members all 101,000+ members (103,751 to be exact) who I’ve had the chance to watch join in the fun since things turned on and I joined.

:1balloon: :1balloon:

Here’s to the next 12 months.

See a few shots of the past ScubaBoard site: SB Past @ Archive.org

 

[ScubaTexan]

Happy Birthday, :sblogo:

arty2:

 

[CBulla]

Happy Birthday :sblogo:

 

[In10se]

Happy birthday SB!!

The beach side community of SCUBABoard. Population, 100,000. Age 8.

An unassuming mecca where divers from around the world come to meet.

Some are here for answers to questions already asked thousands of times without hitting the search button. "What's the best BC to buy?", or "I weigh 870lb's. Where can I find a Hog rig that will fit me?". Others come because they have no choice. Homeless, lifeless, and only knowing that they must immerse themselves in H2ohhhh soon or existence as they know it will end.

Little did they all know that when they logged into the website known as SCUBABoard, they'd be taking a plunge into ... the twilight zone.

 

[drbill]

Um, Ted... how many is that in Internet years?

 

[herman]

It has been amazing to watch the board grow from the dozen or so of us to what it is today. I well remember the day I read every post and replies to most of them, no way I could do that today.

 

[jimdiverman]

Congratulations, Pete, and kudos to Michelle (Muggsy) for all the hard work that went into making ITK a success. Looking forward to the next one.

Hopefully you can make it to Vortoberfest...

Dive safe!

 

[D_B]

Congrats Pete, and to all the hard working mods and staff that make the largest on line dive community a success
Nice post in10se :14:
Nice link Ted ... Internet Archive Wayback Machine

 

[Kayla]

Wow, happy birthday to the board!! Can't believe I've been hangin' around this place for.. six years now!!

Thanks to all of you who helped get it going, keep it going, and are still keeping at it... you guys rock!!

 

[Ted S]

Um, Ted... how many is that in Internet years?

Heh... Good question Dr. Bill.

To put things in perspective, when we started ScubaBoard in 2000 the dot-com bubble bust was less than 6 months behind us, Google was still 2 years away from finding a profitable business model, scuba.com wasn't scuba.com yet and most of the websites you're familiar with these days (flickr, facebook, myspace) didn't yet exist.

So put another way, ScubaBoard's not the oldest site on the block in diving or anything else but it had hit its stride before many of the biggest names out there now even got their start. Back in those days a single server to run the site cost us over $500 a month and came with less bandwidth than I'd imagine ScubaBoard uses in a week.

It has been amazing to watch the board grow from the dozen or so of us to what it is today. I well remember the day I read every post and replies to most of them, no way I could do that today.

There's not many people around who can still say that... but it was true. Once upon a time there wasn't even an NDR forum (although that only lasted a few weeks).