I was cleaning up the announcements forum and discovered the post I made announcing the relaunch and rebuild of the site when we changed the name to ZooChat. That was 20th October, 2008 ... almost exactly 8 years before I relaunched the website again with new software this last Friday. That previous relaunch was itself almost exactly 5 years after first launching the site. Honestly I didn't plan it that way! 19 Oct 2003 first thread welcoming people to ZooChat: Welcome ! 20 Oct 2008 announcement about the relaunch: Welcome to ZooChat! 21 Oct 2016 announcement about the relaunch: Welcome to the new ZooChat Things have changed a lot in that time!
Thanks to the Wayback Machine on Internet Archive: Wayback Machine ... I can even show you what the site looked like back then! 7 December 2003 17 members 23 threads 37 posts domain: zoobeat.org 1 February 2004 27 members 38 threads 99 posts domain: zoobeat.org 15 December 2005 60 members 155 threads 552 posts domain: zoobeat.org last version of zoobeat.org in the archives 9th July 2006 78 members 264 threads 2,520 posts domain: zoobeat.com 26th October 2006 90 members 1,263 threads 3,998 posts 53 photos domain: zoobeat.com 19th April 2007 174 members 4,941 threads 11,434 posts 359 photos 89 comments domain: zoobeat.com 6th July 2008 751 members 7,523 threads 46,901 posts 8,048 photos 5,640 comments domain: zoobeat.com last version of zoobeat.com in the archives 19th December 2008 1,223 members 24,677 threads 81,281 posts 24,677 photos 514 zoos domain: zoochat.com ... and it's largely stayed the same over the past 6 years ... here is the version they captured most recently: 24th August 2016 13,168 members 319,582 threads 561,582 posts 273,174 photos 1,848 zoos domain: zoochat.com
I remember those old days of "ZooBeat" and the photo of the African Lion at Monarto Zoo. Those were the days! The current ZooChat site has a lot of great new benefits but I'm sorely missing the "new comments" section as for myself and many others it was the #1 reason to log in every day. Now if someone comments on a photo that dialogue gets lost in the mix.
Wow, the days of zoobeat. I don't even remember how I found the site, but I do remember being hooked from the beginning. I miss (and look forward to) the "new comments" section too.
I never saw the ZooBeat site, but it is rather interesting (and a bit of a shame) that the volunteering forum never took off. One would think that volunteers would make up a significant portion of ZooChat members, but they don't seem to.
