Pinch me - DealerRefresh is 20 years old today!!!

[Alex Snyder]

Holy NotAprilFoolsJoke Day! It is DealerRefresh's birthday.

20 years ​

Here's a throwback to what it looked like originally:

 

[Marc Lavoie]

Congrats, keeping up for that long is understated at best. 20 years ago...

• YouTube was born
  The very first YouTube video (“Me at the zoo”) was uploaded in April 2005.
• Facebook was only for college students
  In 2005, Facebook had just expanded beyond Harvard to other Ivy League schools. You needed a .edu email to sign up.
• The iPod was king
  People were rocking click-wheel iPods and downloading music from iTunes. The iPhone wouldn’t exist for another two years.
• Google Maps launched
  In 2005, Google Maps went live for the first time. Remember Mapquest?
• The office TV show debuted
  The U.S. version of The Office premiered and almost got shot down because of poor ratings.

 

[AlexCaradonna]

I love the category of "Spreadsheet Reports"

 

[Eric Miltsch]

Congrats, guys - you should be proud of what you've created for the industry.

Jeff and Alex were two of the first people I met in the industry a long, long time ago; thanks for all you've done!

 

[ryan.leslie]

That doesn't feel like 20 years ago. Are you sure this isn't an April Fool's gag?

I wish I could remember my "handle" for the old blog comments section. I was active, but my participation wasn't, um, sanctioned by the marketing team at the company I worked for. I retract my earlier statement... that DOES feel like 20 yrs ago. ha!

 

[Ryan Everson]

Holy NotAprilFoolsJoke Day! It is DealerRefresh's birthday.

20 years ​

Here's a throwback to what it looked like originally:

Congrats!! Wish I had known about DealerRefresh back when I was in 9th grade, building the family's dealership website in Dreamweaver

 

[Zack_AF]

Quite the milestone! Might've joined the party a little late but glad it's still here and hope its around for 20 more! I know people have sort of migrated away from forums over the last 10-15 years in favor of social platforms but they fortunately/unfortunately lack the organization of topics/information.

 

[Alex Snyder]

Quite the milestone! Might've joined the party a little late but glad it's still here and hope its around for 20 more! I know people have sort of migrated away from forums over the last 10-15 years in favor of social platforms but they fortunately/unfortunately lack the organization of topics/information.

We did see the move to Facebook Groups not too long ago. However, there has been a recent surge of visitors and new members who claim they found us through AI searches. Facebook isn’t giving access to other AIs, so that’s a win for us!

Speaking of Facebook Groups, I had to turn off the Life in a Car Dealership Group with all the tariff hysteria. I’ll jump back in after people calm down and things go back to normal in 60 days.

 

[Ron Clark]

Thanks for being a great resource for our industry

 

[Zack_AF]

We did see the move to Facebook Groups not too long ago. However, there has been a recent surge of visitors and new members who claim they found us through AI searches. Facebook isn’t giving access to other AIs, so that’s a win for us!

Speaking of Facebook Groups, I had to turn off the Life in a Car Dealership Group with all the tariff hysteria. I’ll jump back in after people calm down and things go back to normal in 60 days.

Sounds about right! In my experience with car forums, the Facebook groups seem to collect a lot of the "experts" where the guys with actual knowledge are on the forums and avoid those groups.