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Convener in chief:


David Lazer
(Methodology, Networked Governance)

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Stanley Wasserman
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Allan Friedman
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Nathan Eagle
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Ben Waber
(Technology, Social Computing) Thomas Langenberg
(Technology, Social Computing, Social Networks, Current Trends)
Ines Mergel
(Knowledge Sharing, Social Computing, Social Software, Current Trends)
Brian Rubineau
(Social Dynamics, Societal Networks, Simulations)
Maria Binz-Scharf
(Qualitative Methodology, Knowledge Sharing, eGovernment)
Jeff Boase
(Technology, Societal networks)
Alexander Schellong
(Admin, eGovernment, Citizen Relationship Management)

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« Thanks! | Main | Monetizing social networks more difficult than expected »

4 February 2008

Watching you watch us...

Every once in a while I take a look at how much traffic we get on the blog (we get around 2000 unique visitors a month). Tonight I was rather startled to see a striking drop in daily traffic over a several day period last month:

month.php.png

It is a striking little example of the collective patterns we create, and how those patterns can create signatures of "distress" (in this case a collective communication breakdown). I am sure if you analyzed the years of day to day data, this drop off would pop out as a statically unique event, begging the question: what happened?

I am actually pretty sure of the answer, but let me throw the question out to the readers of the blog, since you presumably, collectively, know the answer.

Posted by David Lazer at February 4, 2008 10:21 PM

Comments

No idea — even less so that I use a feed reader, so I'm not sure whether I'm included. O wait. . . Sunbelt?

Posted by: Bertil Hatt at February 5, 2008 12:41 AM

My first thought was Sunbelt, too, but that was just before the drop-off. Unless post-Sunbelt fatigue counts as a network event.

Posted by: Dawn Gilpin at February 5, 2008 9:50 AM

Measuring readership is tricky. Are site hits tracked with the use of a rrs feed reader? What about the systematic growth of things like Google reader lately... this may explain the general downward trend without necessarily suggesting less people are reading the blog.

Posted by: Peter Boumgarden at February 5, 2008 10:50 AM

It is clearly a weekend effect.
And it was indeed Sunbelt, where internet connectivity sucked.

I am placing my bet on the awful wireless at the hotel in Tampa
for Sunbelt (which was 1/22 - 1/27).

Posted by: Stan Wasserman at February 5, 2008 2:34 PM

That is my guess as well. I would note that while there is clearly a weekend effect, the nadir was the 25th-- a Friday-- which is usually not a low traffic day. You would have to go back a long ways, I think, where you found a weekday where we had fewer than 10 visitors. Further, as I recall, the wireless at the hotel literally broke some time late Thursday, leaving the conference completely unplugged from the Internet. It is remarkable to me, however, that in some sense, this dramatic drop reflected the breakdown of a wireless router in a hotel in Florida....

Posted by: David Lazer at February 5, 2008 5:37 PM

I agree that it was Sunbelt -- most of your readers were at the hotel, and couldn't access anything on the 25th or 26th.

Posted by: Annelies Kamran at February 6, 2008 12:41 PM