April 17 marks six years since we started this community—growing from just a few readers to over a million, with people now sharing stories in dozens of different languages from hundreds of publishers. Christian Jørgensen put together a really nice Storify timeline of how the Twitter hashtag #longreads first evolved.

This community also has grown from sharing stories to actually funding them. Longreads Members have already helped us finance dozens of stories from outstanding writers and publisher partners. You can see them here. (We’re also celebrating our one-year anniversary being part of the Automattic / WordPress.com family, and we couldn’t be prouder to be at a company dedicated to helping independent publishers succeed.)

Thank you to everyone has helped make this community of readers so special. We’re excited for what’s next, from new originals to live events in San Francisco and New York.