Birthday
We started this blog a year ago today. My idea back then was that Sphere might become a focal point for the Long Island Sound community, a place for people interested in environmental issues to get information, to keep up with what was happening, and to shine a light on the good things, the silly things and the bad things. I wanted it to be informative and authoritative, skeptical if need be, and funny once in a while.
You can measure the popularity of a website in a couple of ways, with a handful of different counters. One way is unique visitors. If you click on Sphere today, you're counted as one unique visitor. If you check back in the afternoon, you're still counted as one unique visitor who has had two page views. If you click here tomorrow that's your second unique visit. A rough analogy is newspaper circulation -- a paper might have a circulation of 200,000 (roughly analgous to unique visitors) and a readership of 400,000 (analagous to page views).
Sphere has had about 14,000 unique visitors in a year, and 25,000 page views. In our first full month, last December, we had 530 unique visitors. November of 2005 was our busiest month, with 1,800 visitors so far. (Lots of people who view the site don't get counted, but the statistics constitute a kind of index of readership and are good for showing trends.)
By the way, here's the first post, which is the only one Gina has written (it was basically a test, to help us figure out how to do it and what it would look like, but among other things it shows that blogs can take different directions and have different styles).
To regular readers, occasional readers and those who get here by accident -- thanks, and check back often. We hope to get bigger and better.
You can measure the popularity of a website in a couple of ways, with a handful of different counters. One way is unique visitors. If you click on Sphere today, you're counted as one unique visitor. If you check back in the afternoon, you're still counted as one unique visitor who has had two page views. If you click here tomorrow that's your second unique visit. A rough analogy is newspaper circulation -- a paper might have a circulation of 200,000 (roughly analgous to unique visitors) and a readership of 400,000 (analagous to page views).
Sphere has had about 14,000 unique visitors in a year, and 25,000 page views. In our first full month, last December, we had 530 unique visitors. November of 2005 was our busiest month, with 1,800 visitors so far. (Lots of people who view the site don't get counted, but the statistics constitute a kind of index of readership and are good for showing trends.)
By the way, here's the first post, which is the only one Gina has written (it was basically a test, to help us figure out how to do it and what it would look like, but among other things it shows that blogs can take different directions and have different styles).
To regular readers, occasional readers and those who get here by accident -- thanks, and check back often. We hope to get bigger and better.
posted by Tom Andersen at 12:00 PM
2 Comments:
Tom,
Congratulations and Happy Birthday to Sphere. Also, thanks from providing lots of thought-provoking commentary.
A few months ago I read a book by Hugh Hewitt entitled, "Blog : Understanding the Information Reformation That's Changing Your World." Hewitt made a point that the invention of the printing press led to a revolution in communications that, among other things, was pivotal to the Protestant Reformation. He then mused that the World Wide Web and Blogosphere were also breakthroughs in communications, and that bloggers are already starting to influence current events. He gave examples such as Trent Lott, Dan Rather, and the Swift Boat Veterans, and the role that swarming bloggers had on them. It has to make one wonder about the role that the Blogosphere will play in history in our time.
Best of luck for Sphere in the future.
Having only recently visited your BLOG, I just wanted to say that I hope you keep it going. I have been working on a variety of Long Island Sound related research projects, and this has become another source for me to keep up with some of the latest issues-- both scientific and political.
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