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Well, three years ago this week we were just putting the finishing touches on the first Bakotopia.com web site. All you could do on it was post listings. There were no user profiles, no blogs, no bands and no band radio. The design was bugly. But we got it out the door in just 30 days after it was approved.

Fortunately, we did launch a community event calendar, and thanks to some clever fliers that we posted around town (like those shown here), we managed to fill an unmet need for the local music community. A few months later, thanks to continued participation by local bands, we had the most comprehensive calendar of homegrown music events in town.

Three months after that we completely redesigned and relaunched everything. Then over the course of the next year, we added the profiles, MP3 upload, and a place where we featured local bloggers. This guy named Matt Munoz started using the site to promote his band and at one point we said, hey, how would you like to promote this site the way you promote your band? He said yes, and the rest is history.

I don't know how many of you remember those days, but to those of you who have been users from the start -- thank you! Bakotopia is really about you. The rest of us are just here to see how you surprise us next with your fun, witty, and sometimes off-beat contributions.

Happy birthday Bakotopia!