How popular is Facebook?

Wow,
My most popular week in blogging by a very large margin.
A simple post about a Facebook Spoof and my traffic multiplied ten fold.

Statistics Never Lie:

Let’s look at some simple charts.
Over the past week you can see the sharp increase in requests.

The post in question seems to have been one of the very first on the posts on the issue. It then became the No. 1 reply when searching on Google and then was taken up by some people on Facebook who had a lot of Friends. These Facebook referrals are the majority of the traffic.
The Daily chart above also shows you how the traffic declined, almost as rapidly.
Two reasons I believe for this.
The first is that I didn’t see my post really getting secondary or tertiary reposts in Facebook or WordPress or the like, it didn’t go viral.
The second is that the more notable ‘scam‘ and ‘hoax‘ sites caught up and posted articles on the issue.

Scale of Traffic:

To give you an even better idea of the increase in traffic, take a look at the Weekly chart below.

The simple scale of how much more popular this entry was than my recent posts (mostly Movie Reviews) shows how the Internet works.
Just to lay the foundations a little better, let’s look at the Monthly chart too.

Now we can really see the difference.
In one week my traffic has essentially matched the previous year, added together.
You can also see the little rise and fall around the New Year through to February. At the time I was pleased with this traffic, it was itself much higher than previous levels.
That traffic again related DIRECTLY to a series of posts on Facebook Security.

Subject Vs Timeliness:

It is obvious to any blogger that the big decision is whether to blah on a subject you like or blog on a popular subject.
If the two match, you’ve got a ready made hit.
Being ‘current’, ‘in-the-moment’ drives short-term traffic.
Drawing on a beloved topic, or one you are well versed in, drives long term (years) reputation.

Damn Lies…

Of course, the true level of my traffic (actually pretty low) is hidden as I’ve removed the labels, but the principles are still sound.
I’ll continue to post on BOTH current security issues and my movie collection.
Hope nobody minds this odd little mixture…