Quality, not quantity
January 25, 2011 at 8:18 AM by Dr. Drang
The links to this blog from the Back to Work show notes and this @43folders tweet have brought a nice bump in traffic, but it’s nothing like getting Fireballed. Back in October, my post about Macintosh screen resolutions got a link from John Gruber and site traffic went briefly nuts. Here’s how that compares on Google Analytics with the recent surge.
Although it’s hard to see at this scale, traffic nearly doubled from the Mann & Benjamin links, but that pales in comparison to the traffic generated by the “mean alcoholic.”
Other people have detailed what it’s like to get Fireballed, so I won’t belabor the point here. But despite the order-of-magnitude difference in visits, there’s one advantage to getting 5’d and 43’d: the people who came here from Merlin and Dan’s links have apparently decided to stay. RSS subscriptions have increased by over 60% in the past week; I don’t recall any significant jump in subscriptions back in October.
The obvious conclusion is that Fireballers are a slavering, undead horde, mindlessly following whatever links their master posts, but never staying; always returning to to their Stygian crypt to await the next piece of fresh meat he throws their way.
In contrast, Merlin and Dan’s fans are brilliant individualists—discerning, stylish, and devastatingly attractive. Welcome!
