Is hot traffic ever rich traffic?

Quick Online Tips have posted about the effect on their traffic due to being mentioned on the BBC's Click. One of the points that they noticed was that the extra visitors didn't click on the Google Ads, something I have found whenever I have had an increase in traffic.

Whilst my Webometric Thoughts aren't in the same traffic-ball-park as Quick Online Tips (since I started keeping statistics on Oct 9th I have had 8,609 absolute unique visitors, less than QOT has in the average day), there have nonetheless been a few occasions when I have seen an unexpected rise in traffic: mentions on the BBC's internet blog,a recent rise due to my Wii Fit posts, and a comment I posted on Engadget (surprisingly producing my personal high of 176 absolute unique visitors in a day). But the rise rarely corresponds to a rise in ad-clicks.

As I am only discussing a low number of visitors in it hard to draw firm conclusions about the relationship between the number of visits and ad-clcks, although I think it probably goes something like this: Although a small proportion of all visitors will click on an ad, the proportion will be slightly higher for more regular visitors due to factors such as trust, and wanting a site to do well.

I would be interested to know if anyone has ever had a rise in traffic from one source that was particularly rich. Not necessarily a lot of clicks, just a high percentage.

Wii Fit Diary - End of Week 3

Last Friday saw me ending my 3rd week on the Wii Fit. Unfortunately the week saw my BMI rise for the second week in a row, despite accumulating 6hrs 43mins in comparison to the previous week's 4hrs 50mins.

It doesn't look good for this week either, having already failed to workout either Saturday or Sunday. Defiantly time to put in some extra effort, and not just on the fun little balance games.

Will Twitter Go Mainstream?

With the arrival of my ancient PhD supervisor on Twitter, it seems an appropriate time to reflect on how mainstream Twitter could become. Whilst the amount of Twitter discussion on the blogosphere and the number of sites that are based on Twitter would seem to indicate a burgeoning community, my experience is that it hasn't moved beyond the web 2.0 geeks (which is also the conclusion of Compete.com too). Personally I am still failing to see a killer Twitter application, maybe that's because there just isn't one, or maybe we need to see the twitterings seperated from Twitter.

Twitter has been getting some good publicity recently as a news source, primarily because of the speed with which twitterings were appearing about the China eathquake but as ReadWriteWeb point out, Twitter is in no way a substitution for the traditional media. Earthquakes and other mass-news events are really the only occassions Twitter is likely to focus on one story: Millions of people on the ground feel an earthquake and it unsurprisingly makes a lot of noise, if I twittered about a murder outside my window it would barely make a ripple. For all the good publicity, news will not make Twitter mainstream.

Although I am not a big fan of Twitter, I do see some potential in micro-blogging. Not as a seperate service, but rather as an integrated part of people's web presence. There are occassions when 140 characters would suffice for the odd musing I may be having, or for a link I wish to comment on, but I don't necessarily want to use a specific site for this microblogging. It would be nice if I could microblog on my own site, follow other microblogs on my own site, and possibly even converse through microblog posts on my own site. I want to keep my own content. Twitter could provide a place for those without their own web space, as well as a central directory of microblogs. Maybe then microblogging could go mainstream.

nb. Before anyone says 'they're called tweets not twitterings', I personally think that 'twittering' better reflects the continuous-droning-pointlessness of so many of the so-called 'tweets'.

Crazy Finns, but not quite 1984

Personally I am a fan of all stories that make the Finns look silly; a justifiable penance for the creation of the Moomins. Last week Mashable reported that the Copyright Information and Anti-piracy Centre had disconnected a Finnish government office for downloading music illegally. I love the idea of disconnecting people who illegally share files, although the problem will always be with those who are downloading on someoneelse's network. Is this story true? It sounds unlikely, and I could only find a reference to it on Mashable, and TorrentFreak (who they reference) on Google News. Nonetheless it provides the opportunity to have a little rant about the constant mentioning of 1984: the book's cover accompanies this particular Mashable 'article', and it is also mentioned on a previous Mashable article the author references.

Reading the blogospere it often seems that the only book anyone has ever read is 1984. Whilst I am a fan of Orwell's work, I don't necessarily think that every occasion any level of surveillance is mentioned it is necessary to compare such surveillance with Orwell's dystopian vision. Surely there is some Godwin's law equivalent for the invocation of 1984 whenever a government tries to restrict a technophile's unfettered use of a technology.

Blogging Excuses

I always seem to have some excuse for not blogging at the moment, although since I posted a blog post last Wednesday I have collected a host of excuses:
-Thursday/Friday - My home internet connection was down. This is a bit of a rubbish excuse really as I could still access the web via my mobile and Eee PC. However it is a lot easier to blog on the big screen, especially when you have numerous windows open.
-Saturday/Sunday - So much to do on the allotment, with rows and rows of tomatoes now planted out. If you think I update this blog rarely you should see Plot 13!
-Monday morning - Newsgator seems to have been down. This is the first time I have had a problem with Newsgator since transfering from Bloglines back in January. So, whilst it was annoying for a few hours, it was actually a nice reminder of how good a service Newsgator is in comparison to Bloglines who seemed to have a picture of their 'plumber' up every other day.

Anyway, now is the time for catching up, including the results of Week 3 of the Wii Fit Diary.

Yahoo!Buzz overtakes Digg

The ComScore finding that Yahoo!Buzz has overtaken Digg is being widely discussed(e.g., ReadWriteWeb, Mashable). So what does Yahoo!Buzz have that Digg doesn't?

There are two big differences: The publishers; and the audience. You can't just Buzz any old page on Yahoo, instead it has to be one of a select group of publishers, which Yahoo is increasing on a rolling basis. Whilst the Yahoo!Buzz audience is also more mainstream, closely resembling the average internet audience, rather than those geek-survivalist-libertarians ("it's all a conspiracy because it said so in a film I downloaded illegally on the internet").

Which is better? Well that depends on what you want? Rather than bad news for Digg, this could actually be seen as good news for the Digg community. Yahoo!Buzz provides a place for the mainstream users to go, and stop interrupting the conspiracy theories that are so much more interesting than reality. Whereas the mainstream user no longer needs to put up with the opinions of Digg-pin-ups like Rosie O'Donnell.

Top ranked online newspaper in UK: The Sun

There used to be a time when the Guardian ruled the online newspaper world, but whilst it continues to produce quality journalism the other newspapers have caught up. ComScore have declared that The Sun Online now has the most total unique visitors, whereas the Guardian had long ago lost the number one position of total minutes on a newspaper site. What happened to the digital divide that was meant to keep the Sun readers offline?