Seems like it was only yesterday that I posted about getting almost 10 000 views. 

Almost 10k « Disparate

That was on August 9, 2006. This blog started on January 9, 2006 (started blogging on March 28, 2005). We’re getting very close to 30 000 views here. Not that any of this really matters. But it’s fun to reflect on how our blogs change over time.

One thing that seems fairly stable for my blog is the few posts that get the most views. Some of my favourite posts rarely get read while some of my most boring posts (especially those about iPod recording and the eMachines power supply) regularly get a fair number of views. A bit sad, really.

One thing that isn’t clear, here on WordPress.com, is how many views are on the main page as opposed to specific blog entries. I tend not to use the “more” tag much so most of my posts can be read directly on the main page. My guess is that some of those posts that apparently get few views are still read from the main page.

Another thing that’s interesting to note is how people come to this blog. Because of my (probably annoying) tendency to over-label my posts with large numbers of keywords, quite a few visits come from searches for combinations of terms that appear in different posts. For instance, my blog entries on both food and polygyny get me a visit from someone searching for “food distribution in a polygyny marriage” (which is a nice anthropological topic that I didn’t tackle here). Quite often, looking at the search terms used to get here, I feel bad about people being misled into visiting this blog. In many respects, lower traffic numbers would be much better for me, especially if it got me more comments. Problem is, my blog is too disparate to get the kind of stable and focused/targeted readership I sometimes long for.

There really seems to be a tendency for older blogs to get more traffic, regardless of other factors like posting frequency or post quality. Well, part of that might have to do that meeting other bloggers tends to increase traffic. Which doesn’t mean that waiting for traffic to increase is a recipe for blogging success. For one thing, blogging, especially in English, will probably hit a plateau within the next few years. Newer blogs are unlikely to be noticed except for occasional visits from searchers.

Community-oriented features of blogging platforms (like the “tag surfer” and “friend surfer” on WordPress.com) are generating some interesting interactions but I personally find it time-consuming to have to go to those pages to connect with people. Having said that, my guess is that community-building and social-networking will become increasingly important with blogs. Tomorrow’s blogging platforms are likely to get increasingly like, say, Facebook. Interestingly, LiveJournal which has always been strong on the community-oriented features seems not to be capturing much of the newer crowds.