Celebrating 21 Years of MrWeb and DRNO

On 29th November 1998 MrWeb - publisher of DRNO - officially launched with the appearance of its first job ad. To celebrate our twenty-first birthday we're publishing special supplements on five major growth areas in the sector, beginning this month with online communities.

Daily Research News came along just over a year later, and since then we've posted more than 150,000 job ads and 28,000 news stories, establishing the service as the MR world's 'daily paper'. It's our readers, advertisers and enthusiasts out there in the MR community worldwide who have made it what it is, so our thanks go to all of you for your fantastic support - and occasional steers to keep us on the right track. Having the same 'core team' in place alongside me since 2006 - Mel Crowther as News Editor and Ian Paterson designing and co-managing - hasn't hurt either.

Research and insight are ever-changing, and although the market itself doesn't change as fast as those in the leading edge areas often suggest, new methods are constantly added and refined - and some of them take up large amounts of space in the toolbox now, with fast-growing market share. We're going to look this month at online communities - which appear to be the single hottest thing in the MR world at present - in a supplement developed with our friends at communities pioneer Verve, and sponsored by three other firms that are pushing back the boundaries of what can be done with this approach: 20|20 Research, Further and the newly merged Join the Dots / InSites Consulting.

Communities seem to me the logical evolution of traditional MR, maintaining its values and core approach while really exploiting all that the digital revolution makes possible. The supplement includes plenty of practical examples and we hope a fair mix of controversy and enlightenment for our specialist audience. Most days between now and mid-October, we'll be including an article from it in DRNO to give you a good flavour - but there will be much more in the pdf-style supplement itself, including job and directory listings, timelines and other articles, so please spend some time with it, listen to the associated podcasts and get in touch with our sponsors and advertisers.

At roughly two-month intervals, we'll follow up with supplements looking at:

• Mobile Insights & Data
• Big Data, BI and Text Analytics
• Data Visualization, Presentation & Reporting Software; and
• Biometrics, Neuroscience and Eyetracking.

Sponsorships and ad packages are available for all these issues, which in addition to MrWeb's 15,000 opt-in news subscribers will also be promoted to the members and followers of our partner organisations Women In Research and Happy Market Research: please email ads@mrweb.com for prices, packages and availability.

Thanks again for helping to make MrWeb and DRNO what they are today, and we hope you enjoy the special features. Needless to say, we always welcome feedback!

Nick Thomas, MrWeb