The spike has a birthday
This week (I thought it was today, but the first post was on Tuesday 24 June 2007), marks the first birthday of the spike. It’s been a fun ride, so far, with lots of interesting discussion, entertaining fights and illuminating argument. Some 30 000 unique visitors have come by, of which 20% constitute a hard core of regular readers. The average month entertains about 4 000 unique visitors with around 8 000 unique page views. This is more than I’d hoped for, from such an eclectic, general-interest one-man-show such as the spike.
I have readers in 160 countries, including the Faroe Islands, Congo, Rwanda, Kazakhstan, Grenada, Montenegro and Guam. South Africa accounts for about half my visitors, followed by the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Germany, Norway, India, Ireland, France and the Netherlands.
Of the 510 posts to date, the most popular were about the David Bullard affair. If anyone doubts his claims to popularity, don’t. He’s more popular than teen sex (see below).
Another ongoing favourite is the collection of cool computer mods posted back in August last year, and augmented by another brilliant steampunk job in April this year.
Other popular posts have been about teen hanky panky (who’da thunk?), why I don’t buy orthodox global warming alarmism and the case of the non-endangered polar bear, a controversial view on child labour in China and what, if anything, we should do about it, as well as a tribute to Kevin Carter’s photojournalism. And who can forget the charming personality and intelligent discourse of Miss South Carolina? She was just a silly segue from a serious piece on George W Bush; who would have thought anyone could be more popular than the Chief?
Though one of my core interests, economics, is further down the list if you rank individual posts, it does turn up in the search terms used to find the spike. Other than my name, popular search words include “public perception nuclear”, “gold stuff site:ivo.co.za”, “rising oil price inflation”, “al gore investment company”, “zimbabwe failed state”, “food inflation + underlying causes”, “resolution recycling”, “global warming”, “arguments against global warming”, “100 scientists bali”, and, of course, “david bullard”.
I’d like to thank everyone who contributed to the 1 153 comments received to date, and the many sites that have discussed or linked to my posts. Many great points have been raised, and much healthy debate fostered. They have broadened my thinking, honed my arguments, and generally been a lot of fun. Thanks for taking the time to have these discussions. This toast is to you.
PS. It seems the WP-Footnotes plugin does something evil with character encoding in Safari, or spews out garbage upon returning to the body copy. It works on Firefox and Opera, which is where I usually preview posts. Sadly, the plugin author’s wep-page doesn’t render in Firefox 3.0. I’ve removed the footnote and added a paranthesis in the first sentence to resolve this problem, and won’t be using this very useful feature in future. Annoying.
Here’s to the 1! Next: the centennial!
Thank you, sir. 100 days, no problem. 100 weeks, sure. 100 months, I’ll have to consider a redesign. 100 years, well, if free markets triumph, I’ll be around now and again, but I’ll probably be spending a lot of time climbing, motor racing and windsurfing.
Here’s to the 20% of hard core readers! Nothing like driving global warming alarmists and peak oil alarmists crazy!
And to the hardest of the hard core, thanks for your support and contributions, Hard Rain. A special whiskey is waiting for you if and when we ever meet.
After my recent trip to the Jack Daniels distillery in Tennessee I’ve contemplated purchasing a whole barrel of the stuff. They offer to bottle it, package it and ship a whole crate of it to you with the barrel and everything.
That could definitely warrant some sharing. Perhaps for the next Spike anniversary? ;)
Old No. 7 Leaded Premium? I have no particular objection to the consumption of fossil fuels…
Beware, it’s only Octane 87 :p
Congratulations on The Spike’s anniversary. So many countries in such a short time can only mean that happy readers are spreading the word.
Well done, Ivo. Now monetise it! :-)
Sharing a birthday with Madiba has to be a good thing. It seems like more than a year that I have had a link from my blog to your site, but I recall some email exchanges about water during the Gloucester floods in July last year.
As we have already had beer together (even if you don’t remember), hopefully we can enjoy a wee dram one day. My favourite is Edradour, Scotland’s smallest distillery.
Congrats on the anniversary and the readership numbers, which are well deserved. The Spike has swiftly become a must-read blog for me and I hope it goes from strength to strength. I can’t help but think that SA might be in better shape if only we had more voices like yours out there.
Here’s to another awesome year.
Happy bday Spike,
Keep writing what needs to be written!
Yuck, I get the feeling this was aimed at your Scrooge McDuck post, Ivo:
http://www.thoughtleader.co.za/bertolivier
Happy Birthday from one of those 160 countries, Australia (I’m only a week late, gimme a break :D)
Keep it up.
happy Anniversary from Serbia Ivo.
Regarding Footnotes, have you seen this excellent plugin?
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/fd-footnotes/
Great blog Ivo, happy anniversary! Looking forward to the next year.