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David Gill discusses his readership figures, mine have dropped a bit due to me being offline a while, the figures are up to about three quarters of what they were before the threats (climbing slowly). Still I note the readership figures of Tub-thumping Tompa's "Cultural Property Observer" blog (which he started before mine) are creeping up: today 99973. It is with some satisfaction that I note that despite all the disparaging comments made by collectors and especially dealers about the blog and the persona of its author, today I have almost exactly 300 000 MORE hits than his blog. Not all are coming here to read about portable antiquities collecting issues, there's the crowd who insist on using my blog as a source of information about tarantula collecting, and the sad people who come here, day after day following a search engine link to a little naked boy holding his male chicken. Oddly enough most of them want to see a "small" male chicken. I am a bit puzzled that the tag "Russian girls" does not attract anything like the same attention. On the other hand, there are fairly consistent visits here from six US official bodies (hi, guys) including the FBI and ICE and governmental bodies, several higher educational institutions in the US and UK, the British Museum and (incognito) several UK archaeological bodies. 39% of today's readers come from the USA, 30% from the United Kingdom, with 2% each coming from Netherlands, Canada, Germany, Poland, France and Spain.
UPDATE 12 November 2011: Paid Lobbyist Tompa announces his blog has now "served" 100 000 times ("CPO readers have now viewed this blog over 100,000 times") Many of them will be people checking out links from this blog. I suppose a question worth posing is who Tompa really is providing a service for and whom he is doing a disservice. Anyway, I'm up to 400 100 hits today. Getting the word out.
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4 comments:
Well, since you see this as some sort of contest, one might consider whether there is a correlation between these numbers and the sheer number of posts you write each day-- sorry I can't keep up with you-- too much else to do. And I suspect there is a segment of your readership who are more interested in finding out who you are trashing at the moment than your musings such as they are about the larger issues. It's also worth reflecting that the numbers of all these cultural property blogs are quite small compared to websites touching on more popular topics.
I do not see it as a "contest", it's about getting the word out.
There are so many deceptions and false arguments offered by your side intended to mislead the general public (the real stakeholders) and lawmakers that I find it satisfying that many people reading about these issues are interested in reading the other viewpoint.
The difference between us is that I am not (despite what you once alleged) getting paid to spread the information and opinions supporting the picture I have of the issues.
Yes, I am quite sure there are various motives for looking at my blog. And those hits also have among them those who are looking for something else entirely the little boy with his cockerel, the tarantula seller for example. But the tracking software shows that there certainly are those who are using this blog as a source of information about the antiquities trade and issues surrounding it, which is what it's all about.
Tell you what, if the ACCG starts defending collectors by honest writing presenting sense, then I'll stop trashing their arguments. While they twist the wording of the CCPIA and write nonsense, to suit their own agenda, I'll carry on pointing out where I see the inadequacies in their logic and position.
I do not really muse here about the "larger issues" that will be the book. Here I just throw around ideas and phrases, try to get them into shape, put them out in the open to be challenged and refined - not that there is much of that going on from your side, the most the ACCG can manage is Sayles' "ignore him" and Welsh's "Barford's a fascist bastard" name calling.
I think the name of the game is how many regular readers you have, and I suspect much of my traffic is just looking at the pictures, not a problem here.
I note your official visitors; I get my fair share of .mil etc. as result of talking about defensive structures in Poland, and other paleo-strategic issues,- although I would like to think they were just interested in the archaeology of conflict.
Actually, while the regular readers are of course welcome (as it means someone is trying to build up a bigger picture and follow a line argument even if they do not agree with it), its those that stumble in accidentally which are important - IF they stay more than two milliseconds. That seems to me more "getting the word out" to the wider public - the people that matter. Its more about alerting as wide an audience as possible that there ARE serious issues to be addressed, and that is where the Internet has a huge advantage over the printed word. (I do not get many ".mil" folk here.)
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