Twenty years ago today, we registered the domain Literotica.com. Never ever in our wildest dreams could we have imagined what that decision would mean for our own lives - and for the lives of millions of authors and fiction fans around the globe.
It's difficult to remember what the world looked like back in 1998. Literotica started only four years after Amazon.com was founded, two months after the founding of Google, two years before the start of the Dot Com Crash, three years before 9/11, six years before the launch of Facebook, eight years before Twitter, and nine years before the first iPhone created the smartphone world we all live in today.
Literotica's community has grown every year since we first went online. We started as a tiny hand-updated HTML site supporting a wonderful little group of adult authors. As years passed, our small community grew so much that Literotica is now one of the most visited websites in the world. Today, we happily welcome over one million people a day into the Lit community. We've seen countless authors go on to become successful in print and ebook markets. We've watched Lit members meet, get married, and have families together. We've even been around long enough to see longtime Lit authors pass away, leaving their Lit stories behind as part of their legacy. Lit tech has gone from simple HTML to PHP/MySQL and we're now well on our way to launching the new ReactJS interface.
Through all of the site's growth (and the changing world around us), the core mission of Literotica has remained pretty much the same as the day we first went online - to support and nurture a community of adult authors, and to maintain a safe friendly place for readers of erotica. Every positive change that has moved Literotica forward over the years can be traced directly back to suggestions from or actions by members of the community. Both authors and readers have built Literotica into what it is today. Even though we registered the domain on that November day back in 1998, we've mostly been along for the ride ever since.