How Silicon Valley Heavy Are Web 2.0 Consumers?

Last week, I used Google Trends to show that some Web services have largely fallen out of favor, leading to fewer searches over time. The same database also offers some hints as to where people are geographically when searching for these terms, and unsurprisingly, the San Francisco Bay Area is disproportionally weighted for many technology terms and company names. It's sometimes said that in order to reach the mainstream, Web and software companies need to escape the Silicon Valley bubble, so, according to Google, which ones have jumped?


Click for full-size image.
Let's take a look at a sampling, by no means the superset of Web 2.0:

AOL:

#1 City: New York, NY
#1 Bay Area: None in the Top Ten

CNet:

#1 City: Singapore
#1 Bay Area: Pleasanton, CA at #2 overall

Digg:

#1 City: San Francisco, CA

eBay:

#1 City: Birmingham, UK
#1 Bay Area: None in the Top Ten

Facebook:

#1 City: Hailfax, Canada
#1 Bay Area: None in the Top Ten

Feedburner:

#1 City: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
#1 Bay Area: San Francisco, CA at #2 overall

Firefox:

#1 City: Dortmund, Germany
#1 Bay Area: San Francisco, CA at #5 overall

Flickr:

#1 City: Pleasanton, CA

FriendFeed:

#1 City: San Francisco, CA

GigaOM:

#1 City: San Francisco, CA

Google:

#1 City: Manchester, UK
#1 Bay Area: San Francisco, CA at #8 overall

iTunes:

#1 City: San Francisco, CA

LinkedIn :

#1 City: San Jose, CA

Mashable:

#1 City: San Francisco, CA

Microsoft:

#1 City: Singapore
#1 Bay Area: San Francisco, CA at #8 overall

MySpace:

#1 City: Irvine, CA
#1 Bay Area: None in the Top Ten

Reddit:

#1 City: Austin, TX
#1 Bay Area: San Francisco, CA at #2 overall

Seesmic:

#1 City: Paris, France
#1 Bay Area: San Francisco, CA at #2 overall

Scoble:

#1 City: Redmond, WA
#1 Bay Area: Santa Clara, CA at #2 overall

Slashdot:

#1 City: Austin, TX
#1 Bay Area: San Francisco, CA at #4 overall

StumbleUpon:

#1 City: Dublin, Ireland
#1 Bay Area: San Francisco, CA at #2 overall

TechCrunch:

#1 City: Santa Clara, CA

Techmeme:

#1 City: San Francisco, CA

Technorati:

#1 City: Singapore
#1 Bay Area: San Francisco, CA at #3 overall

Twitter:

#1 City: Meguro, Japan
#1 Bay Area: San Francisco, CA at #3 overall

Yahoo!:

#1 City: Bogota, Colombia
#1 Bay Area: San Francisco, CA at #9 overall

YouTube:

#1 City: Lima, Peru
#1 Bay Area: None in the Top Ten

Zillow:

#1 City: Renton, WA
#1 Bay Area: Pleasanton, CA at #6 overall

For just about every Web or tech topic, the city of San Francisco, or the San Francisco Bay Area, is represented at a much higher level than any other region, when population is considered. As Google's FAQ states, "for those top cities, Google Trends calculates the ratio of searches for your term coming from each city divided by total Google searches coming from the same city." It's no surprise that people in the Bay Area and Silicon Valley are looking for Web details more frequently than anywhere else.

What is also interesting is those companies or technologies that broke out of the Silicon Valley bubble. AOL, eBay, Facebook, MySpace and Yahoo! are not big surprises. In fact, the bigger the name, the more likely they are to get a higher share of searches from somewhere else. As many are eager to see what it takes for a product to break through to "the mainstream" and get out of the geek overload common here, Google Trends can give a little insight as to whether a service has done it.

I didn't name the hundreds and hundreds of Web 2.0 services and companies out there, but Google Trends data is open to all, so run the data yourself at http://google.com/trends and add to the list in the comments.

Related stories:

Scooped: Who Brought the Story to Techmeme First?
On the Web, If You're Not Growing, You're Dying

FriendFeed Doubles Share of Comments in 2nd Month Tracking

Last month, in Has FriendFeed's Comment Activity Eclipsed Native Conversations?, I reported that comments on blog posts and Twitter post notifications on FriendFeed represented about 40% of the total comments I received on the same number of posts, natively, on louisgray.com, for the month of May.

As June drew to a close, the issue of FriendFeed owning the comments flared up again, with Robert Scoble claiming "blog comments are dead". I can report they're not dead, but for the month, conversations on FriendFeed jumped to more than 78% of the comment activity here. This trend, if it tracks for just one more month, will see that FriendFeed has the majority of my comments.

All told:

* There were 493 comments on the blog.
* There were 254 comments on the blog posts on FriendFeed.
* There were 133 comments on FriendFeed via Twitter "blog post" announcements.

On the 38 posts:

* On 1 occasion, no comments were on either site.
* On 2 occasions, both sites received the same number of comments.
* On 4 occasions, FriendFeed blog posts had more comments.
* On 31 occasions, more comments were on louisgray.com.


June's Comment Counts for FriendFeed and LouisGray.com
(Click for Larger Image)

You'll note that the overwhelming majority of posts saw more activity here. So why the jump from May to June? Because, due to the more family-oriented updates, FriendFeed's very real community got engaged. While 14 of my more tech-oriented posts got absolutely no comments, I had 40 responses to my sad news of our dog passing away, 31 on a post saying our twins would be on their way in weeks, and 26 more when they finally showed up. For as much talk as there is at times about sites like this being circular in how they celebrate themselves and their underlying technology, when it comes to people and family, the community there is very real.

Also a change from May were a few discussions that struck around my Tweet updates, rather than waiting for the blog post to arrive. The mioNews story, which so far, has no comments here or my stream, has 22 comments on my Tweet, and there were 39 more around the same for Feedly's arrival.

Source data:
* louisgray.com
* http://friendfeed.com/louisgray?service=blog
* http://friendfeed.com/louisgray?service=twitter

As I noted last month, the data set of followers on FriendFeed and louisgray.com is actually quite close. As of tonight, there are 2,543 people following me on FriendFeed, and 2,336 RSS subscribers on louisgray.com, so in theory, with those two measurements being close, there is an equal opportunity for viewers to comment on either location, with there being some significant expected overlap.

Will FriendFeed grow to the point that I should close down Disqus and rely solely on the service to get me the conversations? Absolutely not. But I've made extra effort to participate and engage, and the result has been a more diversified discussion, wherever it makes sense, without demanding it be here. I'm looking forward to seeing just what these numbers look like at the end of July.

State of the Blog: June 2008 Recap

June 2008 In Summary (Archive Page)

Total stories published to date: 1,389

Total stories published in June: 38
(About 1.3 per day, down from 1.5 in May)

Total stories in June with comments: 37
(97% of all stories, from 43 and 91% in May)

Total comments on June posts: 493, approx. 15 per post.
(From 456 or 9.7 per post and 10.6 per commented post in May)


June statistics from SiteMeter, with that service's numbers.
(Why show real data? See blog post)
Technorati Authority Ranking: 788 (up 129)
Feedburner Peak in Month: 2,212 subscribers (up 181)
Feedblitz E-mail Subscribers: 56 subscribers (up 9)
MyBlogLog Members: 280 (up 34)

Twitter Followers: 1,257 (Up 148)
FriendFeed Followers: 2,542 (Up 544)

Monthly Traffic Rank in Last 12 (via SiteMeter):
2nd overall, behind only April '08.

Month over month growth: 12.7%
Year over year growth: 1,074.5%

Top Five Most Visited June Stories (According to Analog)

1. Smart People, Stupid Tweets. Fake News Spreads Fast on Twitter.
2. The Five Stages Of Early Adopter Behavior
3. Why Disqus Is Winning the Web Comment Battles, and What's Next
4. Feedly Brings New Social Experience to Start Page, Leveraging RSS
5. What I Believe: My 10 Web and Blogging Expectations

Others receiving votes: Are Blog Comments Really Conversations, or Are They Just Replies?, The Gray Family Doubles Overnight. Welcome Matthew and Sarah!, Disqus' Downtime Reminds Us of Woes for Data In the Cloud, RSSmeme Creator Served With Legal Threat Over RSS Shares, LOUD3R Launches Massive Semantically-Driven Network, and OneSpot Makes Publishing Personalized Memetrackers Simple...

Most Commented-On Articles, According to Disqus:

1. The Gray Family Doubles Overnight. Welcome Matthew and Sarah! (57 comments)
2. All Dogs Go To Heaven. For Molly, It Took 18+ Years. (41 comments)
3. Smart People, Stupid Tweets. Fake News Spreads Fast on Twitter. (37 comments)
4. Why Disqus Is Winning the Web Comment Battles, and What's Next (34 comments)
5. RSSmeme Creator Served With Legal Threat Over RSS Shares (27 comments)

June of 2008 was a month I'll never forget, obviously - for reasons much bigger than this blog or any dumb statistics. The month started off sadly with our 18 year-old beagle's passing, and culminated in the arrival of our twins. While some thought the doubling of our family overnight would dramatically impact my ability to keep up on the blog and elsewhere, it hasn't yet happened. There are definitely more distractions, and there will be gaps in publishing, thanks to family obligations, but my goal is to keep going. Should be a fun ride.

In between all the changes to the family, it was a great month, where we saw the debut of Feedly, mioNews, NoiseRiver, twitAbit, Loud3r, OneSpot, and FriendBinder, to name a few. Some you will hear about a lot in the coming months, and some, maybe not so much, but they're all trying to make a name for themselves, and they shared part of their stories here.

To keep on top of things, subscribe via RSS, via e-mail, follow me on Friendfeed or Twitter, or keep watch on the shared link blog!

On the Web, If You're Not Growing, You're Dying

Often, perception of a site or service's momentum can be self-fulfilling.

Even over the last two years of my writing on this blog, the companies I cover have changed, as what used to be relevant has become less so, and new hotshots have come to take their place. But while some niche services are on their way to becoming household names, others that could have done so are fading, when compared to their peaks of 1, 2 or even 5 years ago.

One tool showing the decline of brands relative to one another is Google Trends, which measures how frequently a keyword is searched for as a percentage of the total searches on the Web.

Using Google Trends, you can see the near-death of older Web 1.0 brands, like Netscape, Lycos and Alta Vista, the plateauing of early Web 2.0 brands, like MySpace, and the deflating balloon of weakened brands, such as Technorati, Digg and Microsoft.


Netscape's Downfall... In Graph Form.

And Lycos Follows Suit.
A little more than a week ago, Google Trends made news by introducing the ability to track data on Web sites, but the service's core element helps shed some light on the fact that the interest level in Technorati has been slashed in half in just the last 12 months, that MySpace peaked a year ago, as did Digg.


The Technorati Monster Is Starving.

And Digg Is In a Rut.

MySpace Is Floating in Space.
Meanwhile, as both Google and Yahoo! have continued an upward trajectory of world interest, Microsoft has seen steady decline every year, starting in 2004, when the data was first tracked.


The Only Thing More Depressing is MSFT Stock.
At one time, it was fun to point out that the Technorati monster had escaped, that Technorati wasn't up to challenging Google Blog Search, or to debate whether Digg's relevance was going to decrease with its move away from solely having a tech focus. But Google Trends lays out on the table the tougher news - nobody cares, and the number of people actively looking for news on Digg or Technorati is going down, while many, many other services are rapidly growing.

While the entire market of Web measurements is questionable, from Alexa to Compete.com and all sorts of competitors in between, it'd be interesting to see Google get even more aggressive with their trends, showing the velocity of a term's decline or ascension. Maybe that'd get the point across a little better for those saying their damaged brands aren't in trouble.

And lest you think Google Trends is all bad news, it's not. Take a look at hotter stories, like Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook or Google itself to see what an up and to the right arrow looks like. But if these brands aren't careful, like some of those listed above, they too could stagnate and fall. And once you slow, you're really just preparing for the inevitable drop.

ReadBurner Revamps Stats Pages, Expanding Shared Items Analysis

The ReadBurner team continues to make enhancements to the popular Web site dedicated to showing the most popular items shared on Google Reader and Netvibes. Tonight, in advance of their weekly podcast, featuring MG Siegler of ParisLemon and VentureBeat as a guest, they are rolling out upgrade statistics showing the most popular sources, displaying the average number of shares per story for a given author or source in the system.

In a change from the service's previous methodology, the new reports are intended to reward consistency, meaning that a site won't gain from one-time spikes around a popular story, and won't get more prominence due to a higher frequency of posting.


The new stats, seen at http://www.readburner.com/stats, come only a week after RSSmeme debuted new sidebar widgets that show the top tags and top users for the day, as well as widgets that can show who are the most frequent sharers of a specific blog. You can see the "Top Sharers" on the right side of this page to see who shares content from louisgray.com, as well as the tags I use the most to describe my posts.

Both sites are making strides to expand away from simply counting the data to helping analyze it. Both sites also gave a nod today to the morning's news that Chris Wetherell, the main architect behind the amazing Google Reader, will be leaving the company. Had it not been for his efforts, and Google Reader's growth, neither site would exist.

These, and other topics, will undoubtedly be part of the night's discussion with MG. You can tune in here.

SiteMeter Stats Sputter to a Stop, With No Reason Given

It seems that outages are the new black.

After a weekend filled with stories on Amazon downtime, a brief Disqus blip, continued Twitter troubles, and many sites straining to take on increased crowds swelling to catch the latest from WWDC, I was surprised to see my blog statistics engine, SiteMeter, get in on the act. Since 11 this morning Pacific time, data has been almost completely stalled, not logging visits, and the company's blog doesn't give any reason for the slowness.

I'd like to blame Scoble, or blame Steve Jobs, but I don't think they're the cause.


SiteMeter is one of the most widely used statistics trackers in the blogosphere. And while I could put up with occasional outages from a free product (See: Mark Evans: The Wonderful World of Web 2.0 Whining), I'm one of those who wanted to support the site's developers, paying $89 a year to gain a premium version of the service last year, which gave me expanded access to a wider array of reports.

I'd like to say I don't check with SiteMeter throughout the day out of curiosity, but I'd be lying to you for sure. I love stats. I even made a dashboard widget for Mac OS X that shows me the day's activity, letting me just drag my mouse to the bottom right corner to get caught up. Except, today, I was surprised to see I was extremely unpopular. Not only was the total visit count much lower than I had anticipated, but it said absolutely nobody had checked in in the last hour. And since this morning, I've seen no updates at all.

SiteMeter's seen issues like this in the past. They operate not from one mega-database, but instead, each of its individual servers runs on its own database. When one has a hiccup, only those users on that single server show issues. I expect that's likely what's going on here, and just maybe, with luck, the total statistics will catch up overnight.

Now, we'll see just how much my going dark for about 36 hours over the weekend will have hurt me. With the company's blog not giving any hints as to what's happening, hope is all I have. Maybe it's time to check in with my FTP server and download my logs.

Has FriendFeed's Comment Activity Eclipsed Native Conversations?

One of the biggest worries I've seen in blogging over the first half of this year is that with the conversation shifting to social aggregation sites in addition to the originating blog, FriendFeed being the most notable, with Plaxo Pulse, Shyftr and other sites being part of the discussion, that comments on the originating site will disappear, or erode, as activity at the secondary site increases.

As one of the most visible and active participants on FriendFeed, I looked into my data over the month of May, and saw that on my 47 posts last month:

* There were 470 comments on the blog.
* There were 162 comments on the blog posts on FriendFeed.
* There were 25 comments on FriendFeed via Twitter "blog post" announcements.


May Comment Counts: Click for Much Larger View
On these 47 posts:

* On 3 occasions, no comments were on either site.
* On 1 occasion, both sites received the same number of comments.
* On 6 occasions, FriendFeed blog posts had more comments.
* On 37 occasions, more comments were on louisgray.com.

Source data:
* louisgray.com
* http://friendfeed.com/louisgray?service=blog
* http://friendfeed.com/louisgray?service=twitter

The data set of followers on FriendFeed and louisgray.com is actually quite close. As of tonight, there are 2,013 people following me on FriendFeed, and 1,969 RSS subscribers on louisgray.com, so in theory, with those two measurements being close, there is an equal opportunity for viewers to comment on either location, with there being some significant expected overlap.

I believe that as FriendFeed grows its user base I will see an increase in total comments on my FriendFeed activity, but it has also helped drive traffic and comments back here, in turn spurring the activity and discussion higher. So, has FriendFeed comment activity eclipsed conversations here? No. Not yet.

This serves as a good point in time capture for where we are today. I'll be watching this for sure.

State of the Blog: May 2008 Recap

May 2008 In Summary (Archive Page)

Total stories published to date: 1,351

Total stories published in May: 47
(About 1.5 per day, up from 1.3 in April)

Total stories in May with comments: 43
(91% of all stories, up from 34 and 89% in April)

Total comments on May posts: 456
(About 9.7 per post, 10.6 per commented post)


May statistics from SiteMeter, with that service's numbers.
(Why show real data? See blog post)
Technorati Authority Ranking: 659 (up 88)
Feedburner Peak in Month: 2,031 subscribers (up 394)
Feedblitz E-mail Subscribers: 47 subscribers (up 5)
MyBlogLog Members: 246 (up 43)

Twitter Followers: 1,109 (Up 308)
FriendFeed Followers: 1,998 (Up 1,008)

Monthly Traffic Rank in Last 12 (via SiteMeter):
3rd overall, behind the last two months.

Top Five Most Visited May Stories (According to Analog)

1. Blogging 2.0 Causing Friction With 1.0 Bloggers
2. The Social Media Feature War is the Wrong War
3. FriendFeed Friday Tips #1: Five Ways To Use the Hide Function
4. Participate. Participate. Participate. Repeat.
5. Take FriendFeed Mobile With FF To Go

Others receiving votes: Continuous Parallel Attention: My New Reality, FriendFeed Friday Tips #2: Using the Bookmarklet, Scooped: Who Brought the Story to Techmeme First?, Developers Are People Too, Don't Forget, Five Social Media Bloggers to Watch This May, and Where Are They Now? A Look at A Dozen Services That Debuted Here...

Top Five Visited Archive Stories (According to Analog)

1. FriendFeedMachine Debuts New Approach to FriendFeed
2. My Social Media Consumption Workflow
3. What's Your Twitter Noise Ratio?
4. Most Bloggers Don't Deserve Any Ad Revenue
5. Should Fractured Feed Reader Comments Raise Blog Owners' Ire?

After a continued "up and to the right" graph over the last few months, May's overall visits fell about 24% compared with April, at levels 4% lower than even March, according to SiteMeter, while in all other aspects, the surrounding elements of the blog have grown. Part of the reason for the decline? To be direct, the answer is a lowered presence on Techmeme. In April, a number of my more controversial posts, especially around the weekend, drove a significant portion of traffic. In May, I consciously made the decision to not only not launch these controversies, but also to not participate once they had started. It had a negative impact on my simple visitor traffic, but I believe a more positive impact with the blog overall. I didn't exactly want to get the reputation of being a controversy-stirrer, when not necessary.

Now, partly due to not engaging in the more-visible Techmeme headlines, my position on the Techmeme leaderboard is in doubt. At peak in April, louisgray.com had been above position #40, drawing amusement from fellow bloggers like Robert Scoble, who needled me about the positioning on video earlier this month. But now, I'm lingering in the precipitous #98 to #100 position, seeing folks like Yuvi Panda of TheStatBot blow by me.

As mentioned last month, lest it be believed I've started this series to highlight the higher awareness achieved in recent months, be assured that's not the case. I started doing monthly summaries after August of 2007, when I had 103 RSS subscribers, and 40 comments in the month. Hopefully you find these interesting or useful.

To keep on top of things, subscribe via RSS, via e-mail, follow me on Friendfeed or Twitter, or keep watch on the shared link blog!

TheStatBot Analyzes Top Tweeters, TechCrunch, Makes Techmeme

It's only Wednesday, but it's already been a very big week for Yuvi Panda of TheStatBot. After launching on May 1st with an analysis of Robert Scoble's Twitter activity, Yuvi has followed on with the most detailed analysis of Techmeme ever done (well beyond my surface attempts), and has now branched out to cover other large social media sites and blogs.

Yesterday, Yuvi published the definitive analysis of Michael Arrington's TechCrunch, picking apart the popular site's 7,000+ posts and nearly 2 million words. See: TechCrunch Statistics A-W. In the analysis, Yuvi discovered the site's posts per day has accelerated dramatically from less than 5 a day three years ago, to nearly 25 a day now, as TechCrunch has gone professional, with a stable of talented writers.


TechCrunch's Posting Frequency is Up and to the Right
That post, as with nearly every analytical post from TheStatBot, made Techmeme. This rate of achieving the popular tech news site has meant that TheStatBot has now achieved a ranking on the Techmeme Leaderboard, down at #99 overall, from the last 30 days. Given my downward trajectory, I'll likely fall of the board as he rises at this pace. (See his excitement here)

Today, Yuvi follows on with a detailed review of the Twitter Clients used by Twitter Power Users, finding that among the top 100 users of Twitter, the Web interface dominates, as it does with the rank and file, but that SMS text messages, Mobile Twitter and Twitterific are much more popular clients, while Twhirl is more popular among the common users. The Web interface, in fact, encapsulates almost 60% of all activity (and more than 90% of my own activity, though I'm not in the top 100 by a long shot).


A Breakdown of the Clients Used by the Twitter 100
As mentioned a few times here, I'm a big supporter of Yuvi's work on TheStatBot. I've informally helped him discuss topics, timing, and given the occasional tip on graphics or grammar, but the work is absolutely all his own, and he's doing great. Now, the 17-year-old is looking into college admissions, and hopes his work on TheStatBot as an extra-curricular activity will help him get further along in the education process. You can help either by linking his way, or ordering up a custom analysis of your site or any service. He would be more than happy to put his analysis to work for you, and obviously does an excellent job.

MyBlogLog's Blog Stats Offer Good Insight to Readers' Destinations

Last year, after publicly wondering about the future of MyBlogLog, and saying I felt the Yahoo-owned friends tracker and blog community site should focus more on tracking blog details than personal details, I was offered a premium account, gaining me insight into daily statistics, and full reports, showing where visitors were coming from, what they were reviewing, and interestingly, where they were headed.

While MyBlogLog is best known for their "Recent Visitors" widget, and has made waves of late with their lifestreaming service, it's now the stats I find myself taking a look at, just about on par with my standard SiteMeter details.

Out of curiosity, yesterday, I ran a report that showed what louisgray.com viewers were most likely to click on, over the last seventeen months, all the way back to January 1st of 2007. While some of the most popular items are recurring links to my RSS feed, MyBlogLog and LinkedIn, it's clear that some of the most-prominent posts I made in the last few months have had significant impact, not the least of which was the Elite Bloggers joining FriendFeed post back in March.


An example of MyBlogLog's Out Clicks Report (Click for More)
It's also clear that unless most people are clicking to new destinations from my RSS feed, and not via the site, I don't have enough traffic to make or break anyone, despite premature talk of a "Louis Gray effect".

Below are the Top 25 "Out Clicks", according to MyBlogLog. I hand-scrubbed a few, as I don't want to further encourage the porn-seekers who think Google Video can get them a quick fix, or take people off-topic.

1. http://feeds.feedburner.com/LouisgraycomLive 1,491 Clicks.
2. http://friendfeed.com/louisgray 1,171 Clicks.
3. http://www.friendfeed.com/ 805 Clicks.
4. http://www.mybloglog.com/buzz/members/louismg 674 Clicks.
5. http://www.readburner.com/ 417 Clicks.

6. http://www.assetbar.com/ 292 Clicks.
7. http://blog.linkedin.com/blog/2008/03/company-profile.html 286 Clicks.
8. http://twitter.com/louisgray 274 Clicks.
9. http://www.linkedin.com/in/louisgray 274 Clicks.
10. http://www.ratingburner.com/ 251 Clicks.

11. http://anzman.blogspot.com/ 248 Clicks.
12. http://friendfeed.com/kevinrose 244 Clicks.
13. http://www.friendfeedmachine.com/ 244 Clicks.
14. http://www.rssmeme.com/ 238 Clicks.
15. http://www.linkedin.com/profile?viewProfile=&key=4420 237 Clicks.

16. http://www.google.com/reader/shared/05763917848110205585 211 Clicks.
17. http://friendfeed.com/adamostrow 205 Clicks.
18. http://www.techmeme.com/lb 201 Clicks.
19. http://friendfeed.com/scobleizer 194 Clicks.
20. http://www.shyftr.com/ 190 Clicks.

21. http://www.linkriver.com/ 182 Clicks.
22. http://www.mashable.com/ 182 Clicks.
23. http://bhc3.wordpress.com/ 182 Clicks.
24. http://friendfeed.com/techcrunch 181 Clicks.
25. http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=589638695 175 Clicks.

There are a million blog stat engines out there, from SiteMeter to Google Analytics, SlimStat and more, but unlike SiteMeter, which limits even premium accounts to the last 4,000 visitors, MyBlogLog keeps all the data, making historical reports quite useful. While I've got quite a bit of traction checking the day to day changes, watching "Out Click" reports is very interesting, and I'll be sure to make up some new reports to see accumulative data.

TweetStats Upgrades Twitter Timing Graphs

TweetStats is a great graphical way to see trends in how often you're sending notes on Twitter, which days you're most often hanging out in the Twitterverse, and what hours are most likely to see you active than others. On Thursday, TweetStats reloaded with an feature which combines daily "tweets" with hourly "tweets", giving new insight into whether you blog from the office during your 9-5, or if you're more of a Twitter weekend warrior.

Taking a look at my own statistics, at http://tweetstats.com/graphs/louisgray, a few trends are noticeable:


1) I am using Twitter on an increasing basis. While I only averaged about 2.5 Twitter updates a day in February, that number increased to over 3 in March, and more than 4 in April. After 10 days in May, I've reached 50, making that new ratio 5 a day.


2) There are a few gaps in my Twittering behavior. The first is a near-consistent hole from 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. every day, with the exception of Sunday, when it looks like I just might have something to say around 3 a.m. on some nights. The other gap is a near-emptiness during the workweek between 9 and 5, with occasional activity.

3) I use Twitter @replies for just over a third of my updates, with Robert Scoble getting 12, almost twice that of Cyndy of Profy and Frederic of The Last Podcast, who follow with 7 and 6, respectively.

While TweetStats is not new, the new graph of "Aggregate Hourly Tweets" is new, and interesting, updated for the user's local time zone. As my Twitter activity accumulates, mindful of avoiding an increase in my Twitter Noise ratio, I wonder if the patterns will remain the same. If you're curious as to your TweetStats, go to www.tweetstats.com. You can even put in any Twitter ID you wish and pull their data.

The StatBot Debuts Series Analyzing Techmeme Sources

Last month, working only with Microsoft Excel and archived Techmeme pages, I took a look at how the top ten sites on Techmeme's leaderboard had changed over the first six months of Gabe Rivera offering the rankings. But I knew my minor effort would be no match for a statistically-oriented tech maven, like Yuvi Panda, who has kicked off what should be a very interesting series of posts examining the popular site and how it gets its news.

To date, Techmeme has been something of a black box. Leading bloggers love seeing the regularity of their posts being included. Meanwhile, less visible posters see complaining about Techmeme as something as a rite of passage. Some even claim impropriety and bias, while others still complain the site can be flooded with me-too news and copycats.

But that doesn't change the fact that Techmeme is tremendously relevant and a must-subscribe, either by RSS or by Twitter. To ignore Techmeme is the tech news equivalent of unsubscribing from the New York Times and Wall Street Journal and hoping the local town daily can fill the gap.

In my initial look at Techmeme, I had observed that just over 30 percent of all stories came from the top 10 sites from the Techmeme leaderboard, and more than 40 percent came from sites ranked 11-100, leaving about 30 percent to "the field". Luckily for me, Yuvi's first pass at Techmeme arrives at similar results, saying "One third of Techmeme’s headlines come from the Long Tail".


A Graph from The StatBot's Techmeme Analysis
If you think The StatBot's efforts at this point are simply echoing my first pass, don't be fooled. Yuvi has a lot more tech savvy at his disposal, and as he promises in today's post, today's entry is the first in a series. You can expect to be something of a Techmeme expert by the time he's done.

We previously introduced The StatBot here: The StatBot Launches to Analyze Blog and Web Trends, Statistics. Yuvi also lent a hand analyzing my own site here: Analyzing LouisGray.com's Links, Topics, Timing and Comments.

The StatBot Launches to Analyze Blog and Web Trends, Statistics

Yuvi Panda, a 17-year-old technology whiz kid from India, has been behind detailed analysis of many high-profile blogs, including Engadget, Robert Scoble, Raymond Chen, Techmeme, Digg, TechCrunch and Matt Cutts. Last month, we connected, and he did me the great favor of looking at louisgray.com, helping me gain more insight into my links, trends and topics.

Now, Yuvi is ready to take what's been a hobby and open it up as a service, for those looking to get custom analysis of their site or other social communities, including Twitter, Flickr, or FriendFeed. Today, "The StatBot" launches, promising a new, statistical look at Web communities including Slashdot, Fark, Engadget, Wikipedia and Firefox. As Yuvi promises on the StatBot site, "The list is endless. Wherever there is a community, I’ll measure it."

First to debut under The StatBot microscope is Robert Scoble's Twitter account.


TheStatBot shows Robert's Tweet Pace Is Increasing
Through April 27th of 2008, The StatBot looked at 10,598 tweets from http://twitter.com/scobleizer, spanning 523 days, and comprising 175,543 words, with more than a million characters.

The StatBot shows Robert has already posted almost 5,000 Tweets in 2008, double his historical average. And he's erratic - at times posting hundreds of individual messages a day, and then during lulls, posting less than 10. Robert uses @Replies from Twitter for nearly two out of every three messages, and has sent @replies to more than 2,200 Twitterers, lending more support for my hypothesis last week that a great deal of Scoble's activity was borne due to the high number of people he is following.

This type of fun and interesting analysis is now no longer at his whim, for us to wonder about how reports could look if we just had the time. With the launch of The StatBot, you can now work directly with Yuvi to have him analyze your blog, and your online activity, or to drop a note into his suggestion box.

And with today's note, Yuvi does more than pick apart the world's most well-known Tweeter. He hints at greater things to come. He expects to debut new reports every two days for the next few weeks, and adds a teaser at the end of his first post.

When Yuvi picked apart my site last month, Eric Berlin wrote, "What a great analysis. An automated service that produced this level of detail would go like hotcakes round the blogosphere." Well, it's here, and it has a name: The StatBot. Check out The StatBot at www.thestatbot.com or follow it on Twitter here: twitter.com/thestatbot.

State of the Blog: April 2008 Recap

April 2008 In Summary (Archive Page)

Total stories published to date: 1,304

Total stories published in April: 38
(About 1.3 per day, up from 1.2 in March)

Total stories in April with comments: 34
(89% of all stories, up from 29 and 76% in March)

Total comments on April posts: 364 (95 on Disqus)
(About 9.6 per post, 10.7 per commented post)


April statistics from SiteMeter, with that service's numbers.
(Why show real data? See blog post)
Technorati Authority Ranking: 571 (up 200)
Feedburner Peak in Month: 1,637 subscribers (up 810)
Feedblitz E-mail Subscribers: 42 subscribers (up 9)
MyBlogLog Members: 203 (up 110)

Twitter Followers: 801 (Up 488)
FriendFeed Followers: 990 (Up 472)

Monthly Traffic Rank in Last 12 (via SiteMeter): 1st overall, by 25%.

Top Five Most Visited April Stories (According to Analog)

1. Should Fractured Feed Reader Comments Raise Blog Owners' Ire?
2. Most Bloggers Don't Deserve Any Ad Revenue
3. FriendFeedMachine Debuts New Approach to FriendFeed
4. What's Your Twitter Noise Ratio?
5. Five More Blogs You Should Be Reading, But Aren't

Others receiving votes: TechMeme Leaderboard's Top Ten: Six Months In, My Social Media Consumption Workflow, Shyftr Responds to Critics, Alters RSS Commenting Strategy, Fav.or.it Beta Effort is Not My Favorite. Not Even Close., FriendFeed's Increased Filtering Clears Deck of Unwanted Junk, and Alpha Twitter Ranks Most Popular Shared Links from Twitter...

Top Five Visited Archive Stories (According to Analog)

1. Elite Bloggers Joining FriendFeed In Droves
2. Toluu Offers Gateway to Friends' RSS Feeds, Recommends New Ones
3. LinkedIn Company Detail Shows Silicon Valley Carousel
4. Our Unborn Kids Will Wear Your Web 2.0 Schwag
5. ReadBurner Lights Up In Simmer Mode

While April again saw personal records fall for blog traffic, it's clear the real growth and engagement is found in Web services, external commenting and linking. Overall traffic grew 25% from March, measured in unique visitors, and individual days saw spikes that rivaled a month's traffic for me less than a year ago. Yet it's activity at FriendFeed, Twitter and Disqus that is really growing. Technorati and MyBlogLog rankings also spiked dramatically in April.

One word of caution, lest it be believed I've started this series to highlight the higher awareness achieved in recent months, be assured that's not the case. I started doing monthly summaries after August of 2007, when I had 103 RSS subscribers, and 40 comments in the month. Hopefully you find these interesting or useful.

To keep on top of things, subscribe via RSS, via e-mail, follow me on Friendfeed or Twitter, or keep watch on our shared link blog!

Should Bloggers Open Up Their Statistics?

The Web makes it incredibly easy to be measured, and to be measured publicly. There are many metrics out there, be they Technorati Authority, based on unique external hyperlinks, total RSS subscribers (via FeedBurner), total Twitter followers, and friends of all types, from FriendFeed to Facebook and back. But while most of us are more than eager to share that data, when it comes to actually sharing the traffic we receive on our blogs, it can be a closely-guarded secret. Talking about visit counts can be seen as off-limits as one's salary.

As today is April 30th, wrapping up another month, today offers yet another opportunity to sum up the month's statistics, show trends, and compare to the past. (You'll see a "State of the Blog" post from me on this early tomorrow, as we do each month) But while, to date, I've shown graphs, I usually hide the total number of visitors, page views, etc. And now, I ask openly, why?

I think there are two major reasons that bloggers as a whole don't open up their statistics for others to view:

1) The Inferiority Complex

By sharing my statistics openly, it will now be obvious to the world how little real traffic I get, opening me to ridicule. The emperor has no clothes, it could be said. Also, maybe the traffic I receive isn't seen as "quality" traffic? I still get a lot of visitors from Google image searches looking for R-rated material in vain. Maybe I don't want everybody to see that, and, therefore, take the site less seriously?

But yet, the reverse problem also holds true.

2) The Big Head Complex

By sharing my statistics openly, it could be shown we're bragging, highlighting traffic, growth, and the trends. Smaller bloggers just getting started might see the data as unattainable and could throw potshots.

It all depends on perspective.

So why open up? We've come a long way since free hit counters were the rage back in the mid to late 1990s, and one could up the number just by refreshing a page in the browser. Now, whether your stat package of choice is SiteMeter or Google Analytics, your site traffic has likely been made invisible to your readers, making actual, true, traffic a mystery. But in the interest of openness, data sharing, and collaboration, I think it's time to consider making our blog traffic 100% available and visible.

Advantages:

1) Making traffic details public establishes a data point

Just as it makes sense to visit Salary.com and determine what other people with your title in your geography are commanding, viewing other's statistics can give you a reference point for how you are performing against your peers.

2) Making traffic sources public enables new sites' discovery

One of the most interesting things I find from my statistics are where people are coming from, in the referral logs. It's likely that those people caring enough to send a link my way might be interested in the same topics I am, and, using the transitive property, my readers would be interested in what they are as well.

3) Making content details public shows popularity of topics

Despite one's best efforts, not every single story gets the same amount of solid traffic. There are peaks and valleys. Making this data public could better give guidance to other writers as to what topics are most interesting, might get the most engagement, or views.

Disadvantages:

1) Establishing that data point puts you on a chart somewhere

Whether the total number of unique visitors, page views, referrals is in the hundreds, thousands or hundreds of thousands, by establishing that data publicly, your traffic now becomes part of the conversation, relative to yourself and relative to others, so you'll need to come to terms with this in advance.

2) Exposing traffic details could lead to others' snooping

A good blogger who knows their statistics can get used to specific readers. With a good combination of MyBlogLog, and location-based visits, I have a good idea of who the most frequent visitors are, and I think I know what stories they read, if I get the time to look it up. Maybe others could be as aggressive and figure out the same information. Some visitors might not like having this potential to be snooped expanded to the masses.

3) Your statistics could actually go down

It's one thing to post data at your peak when things are going well. But if you have a slow week or months, and your numbers collapse, there's no hiding it. You can't undo a number once it's out, so that too would be a risk.

So here's what I'm thinking. I have nothing to hide. Tomorrow, when we do our statistical summary for the prior month, I'll use the statistics I have on hand, and expose the sources of the data. We'll see what happens. And maybe, as you go about your efforts, you'll consider opening up. This isn't a question of who's bigger than anybody else or what's good traffic versus bad. I feel that as bloggers, the more data we have available, the more empowered we are. Let me know if this is something you would be eager to participate in, and what your thoughts are.

More Noise About Twitter Noise

My Friday post on trying to determine a way to measure Twitter users, by using available metrics, including total updates and total followers, turned out to be a more visible and conversational than I had anticipated. While some objected to the ratio, and others objected to the analysis, it has been interesting to watch the continued discussion in recent days, as additional metrics for measurement have debuted, with the same objective in mind, essentially trying to find if you're using Twitter in the way your audience wants you to.

Some highlights from around the Web, which I tracked on Del.icio.us:

BroadStuff: Aspects of Ratios - Noises, Signals and Friendliness

"...I'm not sure it measures signal to noise per se as it has no time basis inbuilt, and looks at relatives output rather than the relative input I experience..."

Sweet!: Talking loudly on Twitter

"...I guess I take offense (in a very lightly term) to the statement that there are more “noisy” people who have “… a lot more ‘updates’ than actual ‘followers."

Stowe Boyd: The Twitter Conversational Index And The Twitter Noise Ratio

"Boyd's Twitter Conversational Index = (number of tweets / number of replies made by followers)"

Dave Winer: Twitter Spewage among Dave Winer's contacts

"... these numbers give me new respect for Twitter. Each twit you post has to be delivered in some fashion to everyone who follows you. That's a lot of delivering!"

Stephanie Booth: Twitter Metrics: Let’s Remain Scientific, Please!

DCortesi: Twitter Reputation Statistics

"... people are trying to figure out how best to use Twitter given its recent surge in popularity and accompanying spaminess."

Commetrics: SocioTwitting - developing metrics for Twitter volume vs. Twitter influence

"... what is needed is a set of statistical indicators that give us a better approximation of reality."

Sarah In Tampa: Another Way to Classify Twitter Users

"... this represents a completely different way to categorize users - some of our megaphones become healthy and some of our listeners become twittercasters."

Interestingly enough, as casually as I put together the "Twitter Noise" ratio, many people on Twitter went out and measured their number, even if they felt the methodology was flawed. And amazingly to me, Twitter Portugal, a Twitter-related site for Portuguese users, even embedded both the "Twitter Noise" ratio and Dave Winer's "Spewage" ratio into user profiles, to give potential followers an expectation for what they were getting into. You can see some of those profiles here: BrunoFigueiredo, Publico, and Phantas. I don't know if that's a statistic I would want sitting on my profile, but the site's already jumped ahead and done it.

Also very interesting is a site called Twitter Quotient, which has multiple measurements, with even harsher descriptions than I had intended. Pretty wild. Who knew the landmine I was stepping on Friday?

And in case you were curious, my Twitter Noise ratio dropped from .49 on Friday to .45 today. Sounds like I need to Tweet more!

What's Your Twitter Noise Ratio?

The many thousands of people who use Twitter do so in wildly different ways. Some use it to deliver minute by minute updates of their daily activity. Others use it to hold conversations with friends and peers using the service. And still, a good percentage of people use Twitter as a broadcast medium to announce items, but not necessarily to engage. Meanwhile, as Twitter has grown, its not uncommon to see people either following, or being followed, by thousands of other users. Some do so reciprocally, while others are more discerning.

I feel there are different categories of Twitter users, from those who have a listening audience, measured by a high "followers" to "updates" ratio, those who are engaging, seen with near equal "followers" and "updates", and those who are more noisy, with a lot more "updates" than actual "followers".

Taking a look at 48 Twitter users I eith