This is way overdue, since December 3rd or 23rd depending on your point of view (POV), when Bajan Reporter became 6 altogether for the latter date and the earlier date is the day it became a website in 2009.

Back in 2006 we had little material, examining the antics of my cats, publishing reviews the print media never ran and reviewing some poetry and music at City and South Coast pubs. When the website began three years later, because traffic had soared to 1,100 per day then, still advertisers were hesitant for branching into for them what were unknown waters, web advertising? Art shows and film festivals were the initial events which sponsored the maintenance of servers, domain names and so forth…

Bajan Reporter in 2013 is a whole new ball game – the website is revamped to allow Android or Apple or RIM users to read without an App. Content is from Montserrat, Grenada, Trinidad, Jamaica, St Maarten among many other islands plus a range of International topics from Project Syndicate. Advertisers now sound like a Who’s Who of Barbadian businesses, they know the readership has jumped close to 10,000 Bajans a day and over 200,000 a week globally.

The unusual style of presenting stories has drawn – LIME, First Caribbean, Sparman Clinic, the US Embassy, Louis Vuitton, Mojo’s in Worthing, Boarded Hall Villas, Wunnuh Publishing, SOL Petroleum, the Canadian High Commission and more from past to present to announce their services here; they realise with stories appearing unlike how the print media does it this draws readers to see their promotional content and with prices at a reasonable status? Many are repeat customers like the Fertility Clinic who’s been with Bajan Reporter from the beginning!

What are the events of 2012 which justified advertising with Barbados’ first online Web Magazine (Barbados Today emerged a month after me, Barbados Free Press is a blog where the contributors are anonymous, while Underground came out a year after BFP and my initial blog)? Since comments are moderated as Bajan Reporter does not hide who’s involved, comments are few but what we gauge is the level of Shares via Facebook (seeing over 10 Shares as a story of interest)… Working our way from the least to the most?

At the low end of the scale, politics holds sway… One local and the other from St Kitts – There seems to be an odd correlation of a spike in hacking attempts on Bajan Reporter once I carry cartoons on the DLP or raise sallies at Donville Inniss, so I wrote about it and this earned 12 Shares plus it drew 2 irate comments saying the item was unworthy without qualifying why, LOL!

The tale from Basseterre where Denzil Douglas is severely embattled at the moment is when he decided to postpone the Budget shortly after Mark Brantley made a No Confidence motion against him and Parliament is yet to reconvene, many feel this is because Dougie’s own colleagues – Sam Condor & Timothy Harris – would vote against the 4 term regime… The item pulled 14 shares, more than Bajan Politics! This as Kittitians eagerly await to carry out their constitutional duties…

Further up the scale was a Latino heartthrob from Colombian Emeralds International, Diego Galante – a modern day Indiana Jones who procures the gems for CEI, will he have a hit song next? LOL – he earned 16 shares via Zuckerberg’s instrument.

Barbadian culture was key for the 17 shares on Facebook, it was lamenting the progress of the Cultural Stakeholders’ bill despite an elaborate all-day Luncheon and amendments supplied.

Rosemary Parkinson‘s view on the Dairy Industry drew a late viral surge towards the end of December, of 29 persons with comments in both Bajan Reporter and Facebook itself – even from a BAS official and a former B’dos Manufacturers President!

Then it was back to Politics again when a Harper’s magazine item on how American Elections over the last century have been, if not altered, then outright stolen from one party to the next and since this was during the height of Zomney Vs. Barack and thus it earned 28 shares on Social Media’s prime venue.

Then 32 Shares was when the Environment and Animal Cruelty held sway despite a Surfer’s wish to ignore the truth so as to push sales for his outfit – a dead dog clearly involved at the losing end of a fight was unceremoniously dumped in the south coast and it made life hell for a nearby resident who was so tired of finding similar corpses that he went & placed poles to stop indiscriminate dumping, but the surfer persuaded Barbados Free Press and eventually me (mainly to avoid any potential legal hassles since I am not anonymous) to alter the title and contents of the story so as to maintain his sales popularity.

Shares jumped to 42 at Facebook when a South Coast eatery vented its trials and tribulations with a Neighbour from Hell; the same venue when listing its rebranding and intent for organic ingredients cultivated in their own garden, pumped out to 91 in the Social Media Empire where Barbados has 161,000 subscribers!

Now, for the all-time winner of 2012, it is a case where Entrepreneurship seeks to flourish deep in the landlocked side of the southern part of Barbados. Situated in Lowlands, they earn quite a bit of cash from overseas searches for rare and distinguished silverware, antiques and memorabilia… Marc Kurtis Interiors went viral on Facebook, where 144 shares carried it far and wide, with 39 other shares in other Social Media Engines! Congrats, what love for restoring furniture rather than mashing up and buying back can do…