Five on Friday: 2008 Stats

Published in the wee hours of January 2, 2009

The last time I ran these stats queries was in 2006; I totally forgot to do it for 2007. Fortunately, I remembered it today so I get to do it for 2008. Though I’m pleased that 2008 is now over, the numbers I churned out are not exactly that encouraging:

Now let’s break it down.

• I’ve been blogging less each year, consistently. For 2008, I published less than half the number of entries I wrote in 2005. Though posting volume is not necessarily a determinant of blog decline, 54 blog posts is hardly a good number.
• Comment count is a better figure for measuring interaction and as we know, weblogs (and web 2.0) is all about talk and communication. With just 658 comments and 54 posts in a year, it comes out to around 12 comments per post. I’d be happier if that figure was twice as much, or even more.
• The average post length is one detail to smile about. Roughly at 2000 characters per post, the 2008 figure is approximately the same as that of the previous year. More importantly, it is almost twice of that in 2005 and 2006, which only means that despite writing less often, maybe I do write lengthier detailed stories than before.
• Because I had a measly number of entries for 2008, the total length for all posts was almost in 2006 levels. Bad.
• Perhaps directly related to me writing less and not engaging thouroughly in the blogoshere, I shared roughly half as much links as I used to. I’ve been consciously watching the quality of links I share, trying not to be just another echo chamber, so I could only hope that the decrease in volume was offset by the increase in quality.

Of course these numbers don’t tell a complete story, but if I were to evaluate my blog as it was in 2008, it certainly didn’t do as well as it used to. I’m self–centered like that, I know, but it’s simply true that rebelpixel.com can be a lot more than what it is now. I could sell pr0n and things like that. Now seriously, I need a plan. A masterplan:

• shoot more photos since it’s the last thing on Earth I could unlearn;
• write more stories more often;
• do more of Five on Friday;
• post more photos from the more than three–years–old archive that’s eating away disk space faster than I could browse through them; and
• do more  things that isn’t on everybody’s blog archive. Whatever they turn out to be.

Two lists of “fives.” Five on Friday.

2009.01.02