Telephones and Traffic
Only the calls you make are ever received by people.
Earlier today for whatsoever reason i decided to go check the analytics tab of one of my GitHub projects.
If you know me, you might know that one of the most defining moments in my career, where i decided that i want to be in tech was when one of my open source projects hit 1.2k GitHub stars. I know i talk a lot about it—but that project has probably been one of the top 5 learning opportunities in my life until now.
So i was looking to the traffic insights for this project… and then I googled my project.
Guess what I found… I’ve been featured alongside React, Sass, RubyGems, Prettier, .NET Foundation, AirBnB, Google and so many more on being standard bearer for the Contributor Covenant Code of Conduct.
Then I found out I’ve been featured on Wikipedia and I never even knew it? I got to know ByteDance (TikTok) hosts my project on their CDN.
I found my project featured in Russian Podcasts, Russian Newsletters, Chinese Newsletters, Japanese Newsletters and of course English newsletters. (the following tweet is a thread, you can click on it and find more things as I find them too)
I felt extreme pride. But then I went down on a rabbit hole, how did this happen? The first time I went viral how did it happen?
I did more digging, you know what I found? Me posting about the thing I made on Reddit, me sharing it on Product Hunt. If you’re thinking, that did it? No it did not.
The usage and stars came in when someone who loved my project featured it in a newsletter, then someone else who read it and did it somewhere else. I love the FOSS community and the support we showcase each other 🫶
But the real lesson here? Don’t be afraid to talk about what you’re doing. What if it gets 0 likes? I posted about Reseter.css on Hacker News 2 times, no body gave a damn. I posted it on Reddit, people looked at it, some loved it, some shared. Sometime, somewhere, somehow good things will happen to you if you open the doors towards them.
I’ve seen that after that project I mostly stopped doing that, and I feel it’s extremely important for you to just share things.
There’s this famous quote… “You can just build things”.
I believe you can also just share things.
That’s all for today.
Love y’all. Have an incredible weekend.
P.S. post title inspired by Telephones and Traffic, the song by Frances Anderson, she played Lily in Modern Family.
Congrats on your project! Get milestone.
I need to watch Modern Family again, it is so funny! I think I am Phil LOL