(the 50,000th user just got this little surprise when they signed up)

Woo! It took just 252 days for Quizlet to reach the 50,000 users. I couldn’t be happier with the road Quizlet has taken up to here, and I’m glad to share this moment with all of you!

Thanks to everyone who has told their friends and colleagues about Quizlet. I couldn’t have done it without you!

Hey all,

I just got Quizlet back online after an annoyingly long stretch of time - it was about 10 hours long. I hit a hard disk space wall, which is the same problem I had last time (the only other time) Quizlet went down.

I want to extend a sincere apology to all of you who tried to use Quizlet today. I know how frustrating it can be when something you depend on isn’t working. I’m sorry. Over the next few days I’m going to work on implementing some more preventative measures to make sure this sort of thing doesn’t happen again. And I’ll be investing in some sort of monitoring service to make sure I know the instant Quizlet tanks out.

It’s a good thing this happened on a Saturday, eh? Saturday is always the low point of the week for traffic, which is perfectly logical considering that no one studies on saturdays. Well, most people I mean. If you study on Saturday that’s cool too. OK bed time for me!

My new buddies! (I’ve got the helmet)

Hello Quizlet! It’s been awhile, hasn’t it? I’ve had a busy summer, and I thought you might like to hear about it. I had the great opportunity to spend 2 months volunteering for AmeriCorps and the Student Conservation Association. It was the best way I could spend my summer; it was refreshing, educative and very enjoyable.

The first month I spent in Pearlington, Mississippi, a town that was wiped away by Hurricane Katrina. Our SCA crew had ten people from all over the U.S., and we stayed in a small bunkhouse with another SCA crew of ten. Every day we went to work on various construction projects for victims of the hurricane. I don’t think very many people realize this, but the Gulf Coast area is still a huge mess two years after Katrina. They’ve made a ton of progress, but many many people are still living in their FEMA trailers. So we were helping local residents rebuild their houses by framing, hanging drywall, siding, mudding & taping, and various other constructions tasks.

Me nailing in scaffolding. Note that all the houses down there are built on huge stilts for the floods

After Mississippi, we flew over to Acadia National Park in Maine for another month of work. Our projects were very different in Acadia - we worked on trails instead of houses. We built bogwalks, cut back brush on miles and miles of trail, cleaned up beach trash, and constructed a heavily-used wheelchair-accessible trail. Acadia is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been - check out our photos of Maine to see if yourself.

That’s me in the foreground. We were building bogwalks for a muddy trail.

For any high schoolers out there interested in conservation and volunteering, I highly recommend you check out the SCA website. They do big crews over the summer (usually only a month long) but they also do weekend crews during the school year in many major cities. As a 3-year veteran to SCA, I can unequivocally say that it’s changed my life in many positive ways.

One more thing - I created a website (because that’s my favorite thing to do…) for all of my crew’s photos. Not everyone has posted theirs yet, but there are some damn good ones. You can also check out the album of just pictures of me if you’re interested.

Having some fun on one of our scarce laundry breaks

So now that I’m back, what’s next for Quizlet? Lots of stuff!

I’m going to try to make this the year of big growth for Quizlet. I’m hoping to bring a few more people into the company (send us an email if you’re interested). I’ve got plans for new features and organization. The first big task on the to-do list is an overhaul of the search page, which is getting pretty clunky with the plenitude of data you all have entered. By the way, Quizlet just passed the 40,000 registered users mark the other day. Sa-weeet!

School started here in California last week, so senior year here I come! Mmm I have to apply to college soon (in case you’re wondering, I’m gunning for MIT)…Hopefully all that won’t be too distracting.

Also, a big shout-out goes to my friend Neil who looked after Quizlet for me over the summer! As far as I can tell, Quizlet ran even smoother than I expected while I was gone.

Hope you guys are well, and I’m looking forward to another exciting year of Quizlet with everyone. Later!