Years ago we sat down and constructed our “blogs”. We gave them a part of ourselves, to make it a reflection of ourselves, in our own style, our own language. It took time and it took effort.
The tagline for my 15-year-old blog, Island in the Net, has always had the words "... with inchoate ramblings on technology, photography, beer, and geekery.", so really nothing has changed for me. Long form articles, carefully constructed photo-essay and tech articles, link posts, Instagram type posts' I've done it all on this website.
My blog readership has been falling for several years. It was even lower in 2018. I am not sure if the cause is my gradual shift away from "how-to" style posts to more of a focus on photo blogging. Perhaps it's time to return to a weekly schedule of one opinion posts, one technical post and one photography post. Perhaps I can remove the beer check-ins.
I summarized the JetPack Annual Reports for Island in the Net from 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015. Automattic did not release a report for 2016 and 2017. Pity. However, I used information in my WordPress dashboard to get at some of the information.
Blog stats for 2011.
This blog was viewed about 96,000 times in 2011. In 2011, there were 13 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 69 posts. The busiest day of that year was October 13th with 531 views. The most popular post that day was Untitled.
This blog had 33,000 views in 2012. In 2012, there were 186 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 540 posts. The busiest day of that year was December 27th with 279 views. The most popular post that day was HDR photography with Raspberry Pi and gPhoto2.
This blog was viewed about 62,000 times in 2013. In 2013, there were 324 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 908 posts. The busiest day of that year was January 3rd with 929 views. The most popular post that day was HDR photography with Raspberry Pi and gPhoto2.
This blog was viewed about 37,000 times in 2014. The busiest day of that year was December 18th with 3,325 views. The most popular post that day was HDR photography with Raspberry Pi and gPhoto2.
This blog was viewed about 22,000 times in 2015. The busiest day of that year was January 6th with 1,574 views. The most popular post that day was HDR photography with Raspberry Pi and gPhoto2.
There’s this concept in engineering called the single point of failure; the notion that by centralizing a lot of critical processes, you increase the chance of failure (catastrophic or not) to occur. One could say that by using platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or the like. Currently, my “identity” is still splintered across multiple places/services on the Web. To fulfill what I’m reaching at, I’d have to have jacky.wtf be the place where my images are posted from, my blog posts are published at, my check-ins are stored and so forth. There is a concern with security and it’s actually relatively reasonable.
I wish that I could post first on my website and have an entry immediately created on Untappd or Foursquare, etc. 100% POSSE. The community aspects of those services is what keeps me tied to them.
Jacky Alciné