05 vs 04
Now that the first term is over and done, it's interesting (well, to me, anyway) to compare what happened in Warwick Blogs in autumn term 05 versus 04. If there were many fewer entries or comments this year as opposed to last year, that would suggest that there was something of a novelty effect which was wearing off. If there was growth, that might suggest that there is a something of more lasting interest and use going on here.
So what do the numbers look like? Courtesy of Kieran's magic SQL fingers, like this:-
| Autumn 04 | Autumn 05 | |
| New blogs | 2,315 | 1,026 |
| Posts | 11,444 | 12,704 |
| Authors | 1,640 | 1,275 |
| Comments | 21,893 | 24,365 |
| Commenters | 2,819 | 3,080 |
| Images | 17,407 | 20,070 |
| Page impressions | 1.2 million | 2.9 million |
So what to make of it? Well, the number of new blogs being less is not surprising; last year nobody had a blog, so there was a bigger population to draw from. What interests me the most is that although posts and comments and the number of people posting and commenting have remained broadly constant, increasing only slightly, the number of people reading Warwick Blogs - the page impressions - has more than doubled. Who are all these silent readers? Where do they come from? In part, of course, they come from Google; as the corpus of WB has grown, so there is more chance that some arbitrary Google search will return a result within WB, luring the unwary googler into our evil lair. But it also looks as if more people find it a worthwhile destination for its own sake this year than last year, which is nice.
One other interesting quirk which isn't in the table; the page impressions don't count requests for images from galleries. Those requests run at about 2.5 times the page impressions rate; so we serve about a million pages a month, but we serve 2.5 million images from galleries in the same period. That was mildly startling to me, although it turns out that Google is once again partly to blame; Google Images just loves the 70,000-odd images that Warwick people have uploaded into their galleries. That's quite pleasing in a way, though I was less sure whether I should be pleased when it was pointed out to me that the top request from Google Images comes from a search for girls kissing, where WB scores an impressive fourth place result. Hmm.
John Dale
04 Jan 2006 17:56
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11 comments by 2 or more people
[Skip to the latest comment]Dan
Natalie.
I might have known :)
04 Jan 2006, 18:19
Errr…sorry about that…
Maybe I should rename it to 'boring image of nothing interesting definitely not girls doing anything at all'?
04 Jan 2006, 19:13
As for the silent readers, who aren't bloggers, I know of about 5 or 6 people who read my blog who neither comment nor blog themselves, and thats just Classics people, and we're a tiny year group (50 or so) so I'm not overly surprised at the amount of 'silent readers'
04 Jan 2006, 20:23
I too know quite a few silent readers.
04 Jan 2006, 21:57
I am a silent reader. Well, was until now! And I know quite a few others too.
04 Jan 2006, 23:24
One little thing to add to the mix: 15,709 distinct logged in users have visited Warwick Blogs at some point. So basically…everyone.
05 Jan 2006, 14:36
That last fact is perhaps the most awesome of all.
05 Jan 2006, 18:27
But technically shouldn't their be more logged in users than there are members of the university, due to people graduating in the summer. If you see what I mean? (But its still amazing!)
05 Jan 2006, 20:35
Depends on how many people you've been converting in my absence…
06 Jan 2006, 19:44
Catherine Fenn
Image searching
(NOT for girl's kissing)
I've had various emails via my blog as a result of my image galleries.
Two worth mentioning
1) Byron Bay website – basically wanted me to link to their site.
link to image
2) Whale Shark researcher – asking me to complete a survey and forward original full sized images for their project
link to images
10 Jan 2006, 13:27
Google image search for "guitar" gives me a good placing. I get lots of requests to use the image.
11 Jan 2006, 17:46
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