I’ve been pretty steadfast in my view that this blog is mostly a place for me to think out loud and curate my teaching, reading, music and making experiences. I can’t tell you how valuable the search engine widget on my blog is to me.
Still, my blog is open and public, which makes me periodically curious about whether anyone else bothers to read what I am writing. I don’t have empirical proof (no raw numbers) but it does seem as if the reading of blogs, and commenting on blogs, has been on a trending decline for the last five years or so (probably right around the time Google pulled the plug on its popular RSS reader and Facebook emerged as the place to share, unless you’re me.) Or perhaps I am just losing traction with readers.
The other day, I went into the back end of who comes here and does what while they are here for the past year. It’s a curious inquiry to dive into the numbers, which reduces the humanity of interactions to data analysis.
So, if you are a human who comes here to spend a few minutes with my words, thank you. I appreciate it. And if you are someone who spends a couple of extra minutes leaving a note, comment or observation, thank you. I write for myself but I appreciate the company.
Here are some observations:
- I had 11,000 or so people visit my blog during the year. That’s a nice crowd of peeps to wander through my space
- The average time spent for each person was only 40 seconds. Not sure what you can read beyond the header in 40 seconds
- The top users are also repeat visitors. Probably my friends in CLMOOC and other connected spaces. We visit our spaces and interact regularly — a reminder that small is good and large might just mean getting lost in the mix
- Most visitors only go the landing page and leave — the number of folks who go layered deep is pretty small in comparison to the larger visiting numbers
- Only one post with the most page views of the entire year of 2019 was written and posted in 2019 — the rest of the top ten list were all from other years. I guess that’s an argument for having a curated space. It also is an argument that I am not writing much interesting stuff anymore. 🙂
None of this will change the way I write and blog my days. But I do find it intriguing to see how the space is being used by others.
Peace (and thanks for spending more than 40 seconds today with me),
Kevin