Linh Dao Smooke

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What a Decade March has been

Kien Dao designed these awesome pixelated screensavers for Hacker Noon.

What a decade March has been. Yet, there has never been a month I'm prouder of our team at Hacker Noon.

We bookend this quarter as one of our highest quarterly revenues just yet. Largely, thanks to the extremely talented and hardworking Utsav Jaiswal.

We beta launched Hack Noon 2.1, thanks to Storm, Austin and Dane 's amazing work. The site is built on an entirely new infrastructure, with major improvements to UX & design, a dynamic curation, and a focus on content first. The early returns are encouraging, with more pages per session and more monthly users (about 4.5 million)

Our social team are kick-assing this pandemic in the butt! Daria, Kien and Natasha are coming up with creative content ranging from covid19 GIFs (https://giphy.com/hackernoon), social & editorial campaigns surrounding work from home era, resulting in higher engagements across all platforms. You can download the latest version of our trademark pixelated design on https://unsplash.com/@hackernoon for your wallpaper or screensaver, as seen in my desktop below

All the while, we come up with our first ever coin. You can read the white paper here: https://hackernoon.com/the-nullcointm-white-paper-public-release-twfe32qz

Even during a pandemic, life has to go on and work doesn't stop. Yes, we are beyond privileged to be able to work from home during this time and add a little bit of light & knowledge to the world. If there's anything this pandemic has taught us, it is these:

1. more than ever, people will and need to spread love and knowledge to the world through content. And not paywalled content. Free, open content to everyone, writers and readers alike;

2. Adapt, adapt, adapt. This is now our new normal for the rest of who knows how long. Maybe this year, maybe for years to come. The sooner we accept this new reality, the easier it will be; and

3. Tech saves the world. There, I said it. And i'm not saying this to be disrespectful to the tens and hundreds of millions of real heroes out there. The healthworkers, the grocers, the truckers, the frontliners are still the best. But i'm saying it because I'm tired of people blaming tech industry as evil, opportunistic, destroyer of world. Suddenly, tech now more than ever becomes the glue that keeps us all together, connected though apart. Our social fabrics changed over night. And nobody think twice about the real value of tech anymore in this uncertain time.

Stay safe & socially distant everyone.

#backtotheinternet