I run a small operation here. I consider this blog a success, simply because it has daily traffic. Depending on my activity level, “daily traffic” ranges from single digit numbers from my loyal bot readers to playing between the 20 to 40 views. A lot of it comes from search traffic, who seem to stay to look at a couple articles and then go about their merry way. Like a homeless person washing himself on a busy street in drain water with his underpants for a washcloth, I’m intriguing enough for a lingering glance, but ultimately scary and potentially diseased.
So, after coming back from a few days of settling myself into the educational system, I was a tinge stunned at the results. (Yes, I am a student part-time, and have been for a duration typically reserved for future doctors and the mentally handicapped. There is no PhD in my future.) What I found was thus:
288 views for January 19, 2010. w00t, I think. For this, I have Twisted Nether Blogcast to thank for close to 200 of those, and The Daily Druid for a sizable chunk over that and the last few days.
Is this an outlier of a number that inaccurately portrays the public interest through artificial inflation caused by links from shared topics? Yes.
Do I care? No.
Do I like big numbers, by any means necessary? Yes.
Moral of the story: Do your shared topics, bloggers! You too can have the have the empty gratification of shallow, external validation, just like me! That is why the Internet was made. That and porn.
Your Fortune Cookie:
You must gather your party before venturing forth.
The numbers aren’t usually THAT scary, they do boost your views for the day, but this one was linked by Wow.com. Frightened me too :p
Was it? Well snap. Now I wish the blog stats had a referrer’s referrer, so I could see these things. ~Biiiiiig numbeeeeeers~ By any means necessary! Okay, maybe not “any means”. I have boundaries. They’re just morally flexible.
Wow.com links Shared Topics fairly often so it does pay to do them regularly!
(Not complaining, but I do find Wow.com tends to link the same sites over and over again and Twisted Nether’s Shared Topics is one of those sites.)
If I linked sites often, it’d probably be all the same ones too. I, however, am lazy, and have difficulty motivating myself to look for diverse and interesting content outside of my bubble.