Matt Haughey is my baby's daddy.
OK, he's not, but he is the godfather of one of my sites and an inspiration for some of my current online work. I check out his personal sites many times a week looking for an interesting tidbit or personal observation. Read his interview.
Back? Wondering about my Matt Haughey connection? On February 14th last year I learned that a free Metafilter clone software package was available. I started wondering what I would like to talk about with a small circle of friends. On February 18th, I registered "BookFilter."
That was my first mistake. If I had named it anything else it would have been a small easy-to-manage site and no one would have had high hopes. By early March I had the site ready to go. We were mentioned on Metafilter and we registered over 500 users in the first couple of weeks and had a mention in a USA Today column.
Freefilter, the clone software, didn't have all the features that everyone immediately clamored for. So, I switched to Metaphilter, and added all the cool features.
The only problem with the new software was that the site slowed to a crawl. Everyone complained BookFilter wouldn't display or that posts wouldn't post. I had to put it on hiatus. I'm not a programmer so I couldn't fix the problem.
Eventually, Michael Moncur came to the rescue and offered to fix the problems and host BookFilter. We moved it to his webserver and I prepared to promote the hell out of it. Then a family emergency struck and I forgot everything online for two months.
So, BookFilter sits quietly, down to a post or three a month and about as many comments. I know it could be more popular, but I wonder if promotion would make it so.
Sometimes I think I should just dump the name and start over, but if I did make BookFilter as popular as Matt made MetaFilter I'd never have time for anything else. I don't have his stamina.
