20,000 hits and 200 followers

Coincidentally, this morning I noticed that this blog had just reached 20,000 hits and our Twitter account now has 200 followers.

I was particularly pleased with the Twitter statistic since we have been working hard to build-up that service, and 200 is a bit of a milestone. There's a long way to go. I'd like every Computing teacher or lecturer to follow the team, but 200 is a start. Organisations are beginning to see the potential of services like Twitter. It's becoming an important media outlet for their announcements - and it's great for customers since they can "follow" a company or a product or a service - and a surprisingly good way to get immediate customer support (try posting something on Twitter and you are likely to get a very fast response from the company).

The blog has been running for 7 years and has become an established communication channel. The 20,000 statistic is simply the number of hits it has received since the last time I reset it (some months ago). It receives around 150 unique hits per day. Interestingly, that figure has not risen or fallen much in the last couple of years. I estimate that the blog has around 500 regular readers, who visit at least once per month.

Social media will continue to grow over the next few years, driven by increasingly sophisticated smartphones, many of which come with services like Blogger or Twitter or RSS built-in.

You can follow this blog and Twitter in several ways. As well as visiting the blog, you can now get the posts sent directly to your inbox. To do this, simply add your e-mail address to the box on the right ("Follow this blog by e-mail"). Or, you can get it sent to your RSS reader by adding this feed. Or, you can follow us on Twitter - every update is also posted there.

I would encourage you to do both (read this blog and follow us on Twitter) since the information is not always the same (we put smaller updates on Twitter, such as staff availability).

If you are reading this then you are one of the 20,000. Thanks for taking the time. I hope that you find it worthwhile.