monitorThis started as a mini-project in 2007. back then, it was a form on a page with an input field where you could enter a search term. monitorThis then scanned RSS feeds from popular search engines and blog directories and returned an OPML file that you could then import into your RSS reader. This way, the term you wanted to monitor on the WWW was available in your RSS reader. When you updated your RSS feeds, you would get the new search results for that term.
It was actually just a little side project because I wanted to play around with this new AJAX thing at the time. After that, monitorThis was lying around somewhere in a subdirectory on my domain. I had blogged about it once. But over time, many people discovered this tool and more and more links to it appeared in my website analysis. So many that this little AJAX experiment became the most popular URL on my server. People categorised the tool as “reputation management”, a term I had never heard before.
After 3 years, I decided to make more of it. A colleague helped me with the backend work and ensured that the results were temporarily stored on the server. The results were now displayed as search results on a page, similar to a search engine. However, we have retained the OPML export option.
This new version also got so many users that I was soon faced with the decision of either monetising or giving up (because the server costs were increasing all the time). I would have liked to do the former, but my personal circumstances didn’t allow it at the time. So I gave up the project.