I think people like reading these, so here they are! The April 2008 visitor statistics are presented first, with the posting statistics posted last. Raw numbers for the posting statistics are included as an image at the very bottom of this post.
Visitor Statistics
Note: The raw number is for April. The percentage next to that is the increase (or decrease) from March. The percentage in parentheses is the increase (or decrease) from April 2007. For March 2008, the first day is not counted to ensure that everything matches up (March has 31 days, April only 30).
Visits: 39258 3.11% (84.18%)
Pageviews: 620,574 5.3% (90.05%)
Pages per visit: 15.81 2.12% (3.19%)
Average Time on Site: 17 min. -1.11% (12.96%)
Unique Visitors: 12,960 5.87% (176.45%)
Explanation of Above Stats
Everything continues to grow, so all good. In fact, it's all way up from last year, which is awesome. That means that even though YWS has doubled in size, it's gotten even more addictive. The problem of increased growth leading to an older member exodus does not seem to be happening here, and hopefully never will. As a writers site, we really need those older members to stick around as they can do the most to help you improve your writing. So if you see one running around in the wild, be sure to leave a bowl of milk outside for it. They like that.
Browsers
Note: Everything here is in percentages. To make it less confusing, the March stat is in italics. The April 2007 stat is still in parentheses. All percentages are of overall visitors for that month.
Internet Explorer: 56.99% 56.92% (65.06%)
Firefox: 34.31% 33.87% (30.8%)
Safari: 6.89% 6.84% (3.29%)
The above numbers do not add up to 100% because there are 7 other different browsers people use that together only add up to about 1.5% of the total. These other browsers are in order of popularity: Opera (most popular), Mozilla, Netscape, Camino, AvantGo (portable... usually on Palm Pilots and some cell-phones), Playstation Portable, and Playstation 3 (least popular). Usually, the Nintendo Wii also shows up here, but not for April (everyone too busy playing Smash Brothers?).
Top 10 Countries for April 2008
1. United States
2. United Kingdom
3. Canada
4. Australia
5. New Zealand
6. Philippines
7. Ireland
8. Switzerland
9. Germany
10. India
The only thing surprising about the above is India; it used to rank much higher.
The Top 10 Cities For April 2008
1. London
2. Sydney
3. Auckland
4. Monterrey Park, CA
5. Kennewick, WA
6. St. Ann, MO
7. Seattle, WA
8. Brooklyn, NY
9. Adelaide, Australia
10. Melbourne, Australia
Sydney's reign of terror has ended to be taken by London for the first time in well over a year! It just barely beat it though, so will Sydney return to terrorize us with Koala Bears and the deadliest animals in the world in May, or will we continue to delight in London's delectable food (note the sarcasm in delectable)?
Of course, Australia still has a strong presence in the top 10 while the Brits don't have another city even in the top 20 (Wembley comes in at 21).
Posting Statistics
Fiction & Non-Fiction
Fiction did suffer a bit from March to April as the number of posts there went down a lot while the number of new topics only went down by 11. If both go down by a lot, then that's great. But when the posts goes down by a lot and topics only go down by a bit, that's only alright.
However, March was also a bit of an anomaly; the post to topic ratio was unusually high, so it's really no big deal that it fell in April. At 6.8 to 1 for April, that's still really high.
Poetry
By contrast, the complete opposite happened in Poetry where posts went up by a lot and new topics only went up by a bit for a record high ratio of an astounding 8.4 to 1! So poetry did phenomenally in April.
Storybooks
Almost all of the growth from March to April took place in storybooks, which increased by 76% to now account for 40% of all site activity. That's nothing short of incredible, although the increase in posting is mostly spam. Quality there is going down, which is a concern.
General Discussion
While activity in Randomness went up, activity in The Lounge went down. Yet, both are down as a percentage of overall site activity. Plus, General Discussion has never accounted for such low overall activity ever.
Honestly, I'm not sure if that's a good thing. YWS is a social community for young writers, and the social part seems to be dying down. I understand most of the socializing takes place in the chat, but a lot of those in the chat room forget that they account for only 6% of active members (the number of regular chatters is roughly 50, while the number of active members is roughly 800). Many members who have thousands of posts don't even visit the chat.
But alas, there's really nothing that can be done about it.
Debate
Debate saw about a 9% rise in activity. The quality of the posts there seems to be improving as of late; less hotheadedness and more hardheaded thinking is going on. Now if only debaters could learn how to spell...
Usergroups
Usergroups are seeing a sharp and sustained rise in activity, which is fantastic. This is a part of the site that I really want to see more activity in because as YWS grows, the groups section provides an area where people with similar interests can find each other easily. Right now, there's a group for just about everything, except, oddly, no Young Democrats or Young Republicans. Given that the US is having a huge general election, I would think a couple people would've started such groups, but I guess not. By the way, if someone does start such groups, let me know. I'll look into getting them chartered with the national organizations. But quite honestly, I have no idea what such groups do except order pizza and complain.
Other
"Other" comprises everything else on YWS, and it saw a huge drop. Not quite sure what to make of it since it comprises quite a bit. Perhaps less welcoming going on? If so, be active there! The Welcome forum is the most important part of YWS in my mind.
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