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Politix launched in early 2012 as your hub to keep up with political news, interact with others, and make your opinions known about issues that are important to you. People caught on fast and jumped right in, and by the time the 2012 election season rolled around things had really kicked into high gear with record traffic, signups, and site interactions.

And we haven't had a break since. As Anthony Ha noted in his recent TechCrunch article, "Community Site Topix Sees 40 Percent Year-Over-Year Traffic Growth As Political Focus Pays Off", traffic on Politix and Topix is still growing rapidly since the election season ended in November:

 

Topix, a site for locally focused online discussion that first launched in 2004, has seen significant traffic growth in the past year. According to CEO Chris Tolles, that's because of the big bet that the site made on political coverage and discussion. Traffic grew 40 percent between December 2011 and December 2012, the company says, and there were 12.4 million unique visitors in January. Those visitors are spending an average of 11.5 minutes on the site each month, and a lot of that activity is coming from smartphones -- in fact, the company says that more than half of its traffic is mobile. Back in 2011, Tolles was already telling me that political content was driving the site's traffic growth, and that he was trying to find the right product and content strategy to take advantage of that interest. That ultimately resulted in the launch of politics-focused sub-site Politix, where users can share political articles, fill out polls, and comment on the news without being (in Tolles' words) "that guy on Facebook" who's always annoying his friends with political commentary.

So what have we been up to here at Politix HQ since launch? Take a look at some highlights:

New Apps 

We built a full suite of mobile apps so you can keep your political news in your pocket. Have you downloaded them yet? Check out the Politix apps for iPhone, iPad, and Android. 

David Mark came on board from Politico as Politix Editor-in-chief in July 2012. Besides overseeing our crack staff of writers, he represents Politix by providing his political expertise in interviews and appearances on dozens of radio, TV, and news shows and sites including The Sean Hannity Show, CBS News, NBC Bay Area, and The Daily Beast. He's also working to build a growing stable of expert guest contributors, offering insightful Op-Ed posts to supplement our daily flurry of in-house Politix articles.

New Features 

At launch, Politix offered users a way to participate via Debate Maps and article commentary. You wanted more, and over the last year we've been busy building additional interactive features, including quizzes, mini polls, and forums. 

And you've sure been busy using 'em! Let's look at some numbers:

• 3869 articles written
• 270,140 comments made
• 209,935 debate map and mini poll votes cast
• 39,124 quizzes taken
• 4,328 late night cans of Red Bull consumed by the Politix team (Our tireless Senior Editor Mary Noble may be responsible for 89.7% of those cans... )

But we're not done yet. We've got plenty of tricks up our sleeves planned for year two, and we can't wait to show you what's next.

Happy Birthday, Politix. Our baby's growing up!