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Home > Press > Press Releases > 50,000 and Golden Candle
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
50,000 Members and Golden Candle Award
London, UK -- June 11, 2002 -- Free Pint, the online community of business information researchers, today welcomes its 50,000th member whilst its founder receives a Golden Candle Award.
50,000 Members
Since its launch in 1997, news of the Free Pint community has spread almost exclusively through personal recommendation. 81% of new members state they heard about it through word-of-mouth networks.
As a result, turnover of subscribers is very low, with 93% of subscribers to issue 10 receiving issue 110 four years later.
Free Pint welcomed over 1,500 new members last month, and it has grown steadily over the years to become a substantial and active community of information researchers.
The 50,000th member is a Library Manager in The Netherlands, who has been sent a congratulatory pack of Free Pint goodies.
Golden Candle Award
In recognition of his work in building the community, Free Pint's founder William Hann has been awarded the Golden Candle Award by the Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) movement at their annual conference in Virginia, USA.
The citation reads:
"For his extraordinary personal effort in creating a community who share information about information.
He is a true open source cyber-citizen and intelligence minuteman, at the forefront of peer-to-peer computing, a model for us all." http://www.oss.net/OSS02/
William could not attend the conference as he was speaking at another. However, Robert David Steele, principle of OSS Inc. who organised the conference, presented the award personally to William during a lunch at the London Metropolitan Police's head office at Scotland Yard.
William Hann said:
"The Internet is providing exciting opportunities for information and intelligence work. I'm delighted that Free Pint can facilitate this and bring together information users from a wide range of research disciplines."
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