Who's Reading

I am fairly obsessive about checking the stats for this blog. Most days, I'll look three or four times a day to see how many people have stopped by and where they have come from. Site Meter stats show me the referring URL (including search terms for most search engines), the operating system of the visitor, the time zone of the visitor, the time and length of the visit, as well as the domain and IP address.

I don't get many referrals from other websites other than my good friends Vince and the Hyena along with some occasional link love from Tony Pierce. That's fine by me. Obviously, this isn't a news blog, and I don't offer much in the way of interesting political or social commentary. This is mainly about me playing around with the internet and sharing some occasionally humorous or insightful thoughts with you. It's my chance to try to convey complex ideas in clearly written and properly punctuated sentences.

Any way... Until recently, I thought I had a pretty good idea of who my core set of readers are. I would see pretty much the same IP addresses and referrals in my stats and think I knew who was reading and when. Some IP addresses let me narrow it down to at least a handful of people who might be reading. If the hit comes from Merrill Lynch or Quantum, well, I know that there are a few folks at each firm who know me and any one of them could be the reader. After getting a phone call from someone at Quantum regarding this site, I realized that perhaps even more people than I realized could be reading.

Then last week I got a call from my friend Darcia, a former co-worker from Merrill. When I realized that she occasionally read the site, it made me realize that I didn't really have a very good handle on who most of my readers are. As I tried to figure it all out, I only became more confused. I think that it is pretty easy for browsers to report incorrect information in terms of the visitor's time zone. I had a bunch of hits a couple of weeks ago from the Atlantic Standard Zone (or something like that - it's the one to the east of Eastern). That didn't make any sense. I also get more hits than I would expect from the Pacific time zone. I think I only even know one person who lives out that way, and it's not someone who I would expect to read this very often.

Basically, I've given up the hope of being able to have a very good idea of who you all are. Instead, I've developed an irrational fantasy that I have a hoard handful of loyal readers whom I have never met yet who come back day after day or week after week just to read my dull musings. Some day there will be enough of you that you will buy me an iPod or you'll buy my book when I write it. But that's Tony's life, not mine. For now, I am content that readership is increasing without an explanation that I can quite figure out. (There are now 10-15 of you reading on an average day compared to the old 3-6.)

The one thing I still can't figure out is whether or not my parents read this. I know they used to read it before I changed my URL. This blog is how my parents learned that my brother had purchased a motorcycle. I've posted some things in the past that I hoped would dissuade my parents from reading if they in fact were, but the point of this post is clearly that I just don't know any more.

Jonathan 10/14/2004 12:02:00 PM