[faq]

Check out this thread. Particularly posts #34 and especially post #40:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1011545/posts

[festus]

After the corrupt sob was reelected, I became determined that I was gonna do all I could to see him impeached, so I wrote the forum software and launched the Free Republic forum in February 1997. I was the only poster for a few months, but I kept sending my URL to search engines and trolled the news groups by reposting articles from the forum and eventually I picked up a few readers... and eventually some of the readers got the courage to try posting.

LOL. Jim Robinson says he was "trolling" newsgroups. Thats funny.

Glad he did this and kept at it till it caught on.