Posts Tagged 'lifestream'

Welcome to my new home – dvirreznik.com

After almost 3 years and over 400 posts at Blogger, I decided it’s time to leave the nest, and join the ‘big-boys’ playground. Welcome to my new website – dvirreznik.com !

Welcome to my new homeI’ll write later this week about the migration process and the steps I took moving from Blogger to WordPress, was relatively easy. If you’re reading this via your favorite RSS Reader, please make sure you’re subscribed to the new feed http://www.dvirreznik.com/feed/. I’ve updated feedburner, but you can never be 100% sure..

My first blog post was on January 17 2007, where I wrote: I wanted to open a blog for some time now, as part of this ‘web 2.0′ trend that’s flooding the web and the IT/Business scene, but there was always something else in my to-do list… already there are over 55 million of them, so what is one more blog?

The blogosphere has changed a lot these past 3 years, and the playing field has become tougher, with the rise of micro-blogging tools as twitter, and social networking sites like facebook, which makes it easier to share your life with people, and create content. Many have announced ‘the death of blogging‘ and ‘rss is over‘ in the past, but I liked what Steve Rubel wrote 6 months ago, Blogs are out of Beta, but Bloggers should always be in Beta:’ Blogs are the new normal, everything is a blog… Bloggers, as pioneers, should always be in beta, seeking to grow and advance our beloved format, rather than be complacent.

Market of Informationvia beakdal.com

This blog was the first step I took in the public world, my lifestream in a way, and it contributed a lot to where I am now and where I’d like to be in the future. So blogging may be mainstream now (facebook is one giant blogging platform with 350 million users, no?), but we, bloggers, will always remain ‘early adopters’.

There are some people I would like to thank, and I’ll start with you – my readers, for staying loyal, commenting, creating a discussion, sharing and spreading my content. I’d also like to thank my followers, for responding quickly to my tweets with solid feedback, making the task of blogging much more fun. And last, to Sharon Gefen, WordPress guru, that helped me bring life to this site, in 30 guided minutes instead of 4 lonely hours, sometime between midnight and 3am – thank you, you’re the best!!

If you have something to say, shout back in the comment.

Twitter/Facebook gave me 1000% boost

Relax, not me personally, my blog got that boost.
With June (and 2Q) wrapping up last week, it’s an excellent time to gather some statistics around my blog, and I decided to make a comparison to the previous period, and maybe identify some trends. The period I looked at is 1H08 vs. 1H09.

Google Analytics is truly a powerful tool, and I was able to go very deep (drill-down) and round up some interesting figures. I wanted to verify 2 assumptions I made since Jan 2008:

The results supported both assumptions.
Traffic-wise, the first 6 months of 2009 generated 13,004 visits and 18,660 page views, almost twice than the 2008 period. The increase was expected, but the sources breakdown amazed me. I have a 3-step process for pushing my blog’s content: update my twitter, post to facebook and save to del.icio.us – between those 3 networks I cover almost 5,000 eyeballs (directly). It did the trick, big time!
Facebook generated 5 times more visits – 76 in 1H08 to 480 in 1H09, and twitter generated roughly the same growth – 82 in 1H08 to 490 in 1H09. Direct traffic from Google also increased, by 110%, from 2,800 in 1H08 to 6,030 in 1H09.

Location-wise, I got 3 times more visits from Israel, jumping from 930 in 1H08 to just under 3,000 in 1H09. The US remains my main source of readers, with 4,050 visits in 1H09 (comapred to 2,700 in 1H08). The EU were also loyal readers, with +50% increase in France, UK, Germany, Netherlands and Italy. Australia, India and Canada showed similar increases.

To be honest, I expected those results. With the explosion of new media, facebook, twitter, friendfeed and others, I would be surprised to see a lower figure from those 2 sources, especially when taking into account the amount of self-marketing I did these past 18 months.

Looking into the near future, I wonder what my 1H10 vs 1H09 will look like.. what source will show the most increase in visits? will blogs still rule the world or will we all lifestream our lives? What do you think?




Mobile & Media Consultant. I help startup companies launch products to the consumer market. Reach out: dvir.reznik [at] gmail.com
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This is my personal blog. The postings here do not represent the thoughts, intentions, plans or strategies of my past employers or of my clients. It is solely my opinion.