This weekend is wikiHow’s 18th birthday, which means we’re turning into a full grown adult! wikiHow is now old enough to vote, rent an apartment, and buy a car all on our own! At this time each year we like to take a moment to reflect and celebrate what wikiHow has accomplished, and our 18th birthday seems like a fitting time to reflect on how we’ve matured over the years.
During the last 18 years, we’ve created over 240,000 articles and made over 38 million edits together. We have over 2.7 million all-time registered members, and continue to have a wonderful group of people making positive contributions to wikiHow every month. We’ve continued to raise our standards over time, which has led to our articles being viewed and trusted more. Our reach has expanded, and we’ve continued to find new ways to develop, grow, and stay relevant in the internet landscape. Millions of wikiGnome edits, bold edits and small tweaks from wikiHowians each year have all added up and helped wikiHow successfully make it into adulthood. This progress is something that we can all be proud of!
As with every year, in 2022 we implemented a range of new ideas in order to best serve our readers. The last year has brought new quizzes, “Things You Should Know” sections, subtitles, new newsletters, and a variety of different experiments! The good news is that all of this innovation has led to success. We had a lofty goal to increase readership on the main site in 2022 and we did it - more than tripling the average readership per article and reaching 1.38 billion readers over the year. To put it in perspective, that’s just shy of 44 readers every second!
In 2022, we also published over 4350 new articles and made bold edits to over 2000 existing articles together. We also continued to partner with some amazing organizations and experts. We collaborated with the United Nations Verified initiative for the second time to create a course on countering disinformation online, which was released in 6 languages and has reached thousands of people around the world. We also grew the number of experts featured, with over 1,200 different experts on articles to help ensure our content is as accurate and trustworthy as possible.
Social media deserves to be in the spotlight this year as well, as our channels have continued to grow and we’ve helped people learn how to do just about anything via videos, from kiss
to roll a burrito
. Our top four social posts alone reached nearly 4 million people! This is an exciting time for wikiHow to be able to reach people in new ways - from innovative media formats to different platforms - and we can’t wait to see where it goes.
To all of our community: we are so grateful for the passion and knowledge you share with wikiHowians and readers alike. Whether you’re a veteran editor or new to wikiHow, your contributions have helped wikiHow become one of the most trusted sources for how-to information, and we appreciate being united by the work we all do towards our mission. We’re looking forward to another year of experimentation and growth in 2023 and hope you’ll come along for the ride.
Please join me in wishing wikiHow the happiest 18th birthday!
