So the challenge is to come up with the best article of the year.  While I can’t find something that I continually referenced throughout the year – the article that defined my year was easily this one by Gawker: “The Low, Low Price of a Blogger’s Soul: A Pair of Plastic Shoes”

Sure – the subject matter might be yours truly, and the event might be an unfortunate sidenote to a great conference – but, in the end, how could I not recognize the fact that Gawker wrote an article about that incident? My blog traffic hit an all-time high (Hello to those regular readers that first found me because of the BlogHer incident) and that was largely due to the scale of audience that Gawker introduced me to. My sister called me when this Gawker article happened and was like, “Um, why are you on Gawker?” I got Facebook messages from High School friends that I hadn’t talked to in years. It was a huge thing in my life – even if it caused some stress at Crocs and probably forever alienated some people there.

In the end, the incident was a small blip on the radar. My relationship with BlogHer is still strong (in fact, I just met with Jory this morning), and I still have great respect in the social media space. The love that existed in the comments showed that I was doing great things for my brand on the web – putting them on a map and providing connections that may have never formed before my foray into social media. So – from this Gawker mention to the hundreds of posts that it spawned – this is what defined my year from an article perspective.