TBTF Growth
(through 2001-04-19)

April 19, 2001 -- 15,988 direct email subscribers. See these tables for statistics on the domains of subscribers.

Web visitors are calculated in a conservative fashion excluding all known robots. The visitor data shown above represent a 7-day rolling average. For a few days after an issue is published in email form the Web site will typically enjoy 1000 to 1400 visitors per day. The figure can drop below 700 per day on weekends. Page impressions have been running lately above four per visitor. These figures correspond to raw "hit" rates of 60,000 - 80,000 per week; a recent peak exceeded 230,000.

Visitor rates historically have run at about 8% of the email subscriber base per day (with significant spikes at the called-out points in the illustration). The rate has been closer to 7% since mid-2000, as the email newsletter has been on hiatus and traffic has been driven by the TBTF Log.

1. 10/96: NetSurfer Digest ran a favorable review.

2. 9/97: Publication of an unconfirmed account of pro-Java sentiment at a Microsoft developers' conference in Paris. This account was linked from the Sunsite Cafe au Lait page and mirrors, and the next day from the Roaster site. These links drove the overall TBTF site traffic to record levels for 6 days running. Also, in 10/97, PC World's Tipworld named TBTF one of the five best online newsletters.

3. 3/98: A TBTF item was linked from the top page of slashdot.org ("News for nerds on stuff that matters") for two days. On the first of those days the visitor count tripled the previous all-time high.

4. 9/98: The Congressional Hypocrites Page became the most popular TBTF feature to date. It was linked from Slashdot, TechWeb, Newsweek Interactive, and a score of other sites.

5. 3/99: TBTF was recommended in the 1999-03-30 Tipworld's E-Mail Mailing List Review.

6. 5/99: A Tasty Bit of the Day (on the eBayla virus) was linked from the top page of Slashdot.org.
    
7. 2/00, 3/00: TBTF Log items were Slashdotted twice within three weeks.

New subscriptions have averaged 62 per week over the last three years.

The Jargon Scout feature was plugged in the Scout Report and has recently been named Site of the Day at New Scientist and Site of the Week at the University of Waikato Library.

The Siliconia page has remained popular since the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose named it to its Tech 10 in March 1997. Siliconia has been mentioned or cited in press accounts in the New York Times, Washington Post, Dallas Morning News, Newsweek, Wired magazine, and the Wall Street Journal.

Siliconia is visited by 300 people in a typical week, Jargon Scout by about 1000.

TBTF has direct email subscribers in 101 countries that I know of; the actual number is surely higher.

Most recently updated 2001-04-19