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Web Access Statistics MONTHLY STATISTICS
VISITOR # 400,000 400,000 [3/1/2003] At the beginning
of this week, we had projected that we would reach this milestone
at the beginning of next week (Monday?). Instead, with 800
home page hits on the day after those record-breaking relays, we
got there a couple of days earlier. That extra piece of action
is the perfect illustration of the reason of our success --- if
you have fresh and interesting content, they will come; conversely,
if you have stale and uninteresting content, they won't come.
It is that simple. It should not have had to take billions
of internet venture capital dollars to re-discover that principle. VISITOR # 300,000 On Tuesday (25th June, 2002), the home page counter on this website went past the 300,000. How many people are 300,000? Assuming that there are 30,000 runners in the New York City Marathon, this is ten times as many people. This counter was initiated on June
24th, 1997 and so it took five years and one day to reach this landmark.
During this five year period, we grew at a very rapid rate.
During the calendar year 2001, we had almost 100,000 home page visits.
For 2002, we are likely to get around 150,000 home page visits.
The home page counter refers to the number of times that the home
page was downloaded. Behind this number, there is an even
larger number of hits (defined as the number of files that were
downloaded, including pages, graphics, sound and video files), wherein
we expect to get more than 3,000,000 hits in year 2002. VISITOR # 200,000 Visitor # 200,000 came on September 13, 2001. It took exactly 13 months (from August 13, 2000) to get from 100,000 to 200,000. The following picture was sent in by John Scherrer.
Sorry, guys, but I got this trophy without meaning to ... and it will be another 1,200,000 before you get a chance with the next one in the sequence (December 1, 2000) VISITOR # 100,000 Visitor # 100,000 came on August 13, 2000. We have no idea what it was, but we know now that it was not Stuart Calderwood: "Rats! I was #99992, #99996, #99999, and...#100,002. But you probably already knew that. Was the Big One some guy called Raqui again?" Many months later, the victor finally came forward to identify himself. And wouldn't you know it? It had to be Alan Ruben, who happens to the Stuart Calderwood's favorite friend/rival.
Historical note: It took about 9 months to go from 50,000 to 100,000. VISITOR # 90000 Visitor # 90000 came on July 5, 2000. Coming right after July 4th, nobody was alert enough to make a claim. Yes, y'all are getting soft ... OUR THIRD 'ANNIVERSARY' (6/24/2000) The visitor counter on our home page was initiated on June 24th, 1997. In the first year, we counted about 12,000 visits. In the second year, we counted about 22,000 visitors. In the third year, we counted about 54,000 visitors. While well-financed, highly publicized dot coms could expect growth rates of better than 100% per year, this is not expected from a website that is billed as an intranet site for a small community of running geeks. The reality is that we have transcended the genre. Our additional traffic, which is several times our theoretical membership base, comes from two principal sources. First of all, this website has allowed our members to bring their friends, families and co-workers closer to their running lives. Secondly, there are many others unknown to us from all over the world who simply enjoy our content-rich site. Looking ahead to our next year, we already see that --- by virtue of our relatively large as well as loyal audience --- we are becoming more oriented towards various community services. We hope that you'll be along for the run ... VISITOR # 80000 Visitor # 80000 came on May 12, 2000. That means it took only 53 days to go from 70,000 to 80,000. Eric Forestier wrote in:"I am extremely
disappointed to have missed the 80000 target. I got 79999 and 80001
(is it one of your tricks?!). It was my only chance to appear
in the club website since my current schedule prevents me from training
and racing!" VISITOR # 70000 Quietly and without fanfare, visitor # 70000 came on March 21, 2000. VISITOR # 50,000 This milestone went by quickly without any fanfare on November 9th, 1999. It happened a couple of days after the New York City Marathon, thanks to an all-time high of 400+ unique visitors on that Monday after. The more exciting race was actually whether this site would reach 50,000 first before our estranged parent site Zona Latina would reach 100,000. We won by two days, with a lean at the tape ... VISITOR # 40,000: THE CHINESE CONNECTION On August 20th, 1999, the following message was posted on our home page: "As we near the 40,000 visitor landmark, we felt that we need to protect ourselves against the inevitable assault from Ramon Bermo and company, in order to protect the integrity of the counter. Therefore, we have encrypted the counter. Chinese lessons, anyone?" Tyronne Culpepper applauded this move, "Excellent idea!" As observed by the Chinese reader, the counter moved uneventfully past the landmark. On August 24th, 1999, the counter had moved to 40,101 (see ensuing photo).
SECOND ANNIVERSARY This web site began around January 1997. On June 24th, 1997, we started our visitor counter. In the first year, we racked up over 12,000 visits. At that time, we thought that we had reached our maximum potential. In our second year (from June 1998 to June 1999), we grew to about 22,000 visits. Who knows where we will go? (Technical note: These counts were underestimates when benchmarked against our web logs because the counter program sucks! Sorry for the language, but no other verb does as well.) VISITOR # 30,000: THE CORRESPONDENCE FILE FROM: Ramon.Bermo@donovandata.com (The webmaster promptly reset the visitor counter back by 111 and sent this reply ....) FROM: rsoong@surveys.com FROM: Ramon.Bermo@donovandata.com (ASIDE: What? This guy is complaining about cheating?) FROM: Ramon.Bermo@donovandata.com VISITOR # 20,000 At 6pm on Tuesday (12/10/98), Ramon Bermo saw that the counter was past 19940. Knowing that he would have to leave soon for the workout, he launched an all-out attack using multiple computers. When he saw the counter reached 19995, he made five rapid clicks and saw ... 20001. Someone else had sneaked in between! So, Visitor # 20000, Ramon would like to know who you are, so that he can make sure that he never talks to you again. Meanwhile, the very disappointed Ramon wants to make sure that he can claim #30,000 FAST! We can't want to see our bandwidth charges from our web hosting service this month! (Jose Lasalle piles on: "Mondays and Tuesdays are my days off. I can do anything I want. I think I want to work on getting to #30000.") P.S. There are likely to be dozens and dozens of people who will want to make that claim for #20000 because they don't want Ramon to talk to them. Please be assured that the web log contains your IP address, so that false claimers will be identified and punished accordingly. P.P.S. Audrey Kingsley came to the workout, looking totally innocent. Of course, this means nothing because she is known to be a great poker player. Besides, she has a lot of other more important issues on her mind, like her last race ever in the 20-29 age group this weekend ... FAST TWITCH FIBERS As the web site visitor counter nears the 10,000 milestone, the usual suspects (Audrey Kingsley et alia) were poised to pounce. Instead, the surprise winner was Ramon Bermo, who sent in the following note:
While clicking 73 times quickly helps to strength your fingers, it clearly violates the spirit and rule of the competition. So Ramon gets nothing, except our contempt! Besides, how are stronger fingers supposed to help his running? SNEAK PREVIEW On March 19th, the visitor counter recorded 7549 visitors. But an impatient Jud Santos sent in the following e-mail: "I want you to know that I can now claim hit #8000, and can prove it quite well with the attached JPEG file." Yes, as I like to tell people, there is nothing that Photo Shop cannot do ... (see the attached photo --- before you tell me to get a life, please note that Jud did this one too) 7000 CLUB A few days ago, I wrote: "When I logged on to the web site this afternoon, I found the visitor counter at #7001. Some cheat had sneaked in before me. I want his/her head on a stick!" Perhaps because of the threat, nobody came forward with a claim immediately. A week afterwards, the following e-mail arrived from Audrey Kingsley: "Hmmm ... visitor 7001 ... that kind of sucks. Maybe this bitmap file will clue you into visitor 7000. I couldn't help myself." Not only did she grab the count (after clicking who knows how many times repeatedly), but she even created a trophy. Well, now I definitely want her head on a stick for my trophy! Audrey replied: "Au Contrer Mon Friar (sp?) It was not out of fear. Mischief was the root of my silence." Well, Audrey, please tell us who your French teacher was, so that we won't send our kids to that school. Audrey wrote back: "I went to the illustrious Bronx High School of Science where I did not take French! However, from now on I think I will stick to the spoken word or at least send all e-mail through Stacy Creamer for editing." Well, Audrey, let me tell you this --- spoken words will increase your probability of being misquoted, unintentionally or otherwise; you have been forewarned! Even if you keep your mouth shut, you will still have to deal with the sneaky camera, which has a tendency to show up at the most unusual moments. Of course, you could move to Australia ... |
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