On Receiving Ten Thousand Visitors

By now, the site meter on this blog has recorded more than ten thousand visitors. Apart from that, the average visit is of 1.2 minutes. More than 19000 pages have been visited on this blog since March 2005. Many posts have received respectable comments on their contents.


Well, what is the big deal in giving above numbers? Does it matter much to anyone? Is there any need for such a self aggrandisement?


I do not think that there is any need of such a post here at all. Even then, I have taken time to put this in writing. I had been thinking of writing about this for a month by now. Why is it so that even then I am putting it up here?


While I was thinking of writing this post, many such questions also came up that directly questioned the very logic and meaning of spending time on blogging like this. Now take up some more figures. By now I have written more than hundred posts in two years on this blog only. I have been writing on my other blogs. I have been commenting on the contents of the blogs by others. I have written on Wikipedia. Most of my posts have references and cross links. Some of them are deeply researched statements substantiated by required facts and figures. There are long narrations which had taken up three to fours hours for writing. The question had come to mind that what was the need of doing all such activities. Somewhere, a hidden voice says that I have merely wasted time and money in pursuing such an activity. However, that will not be fair if I also go along with that judgement.


I must say in response to above statements, that in these two years, I have learned a lot. I believe that I have received a recognition also for my activity. I might have spent time which could have been utilized somewhere else. I could have saved some money also. But, I have learned a lot from this activity. I may not have received any recognition by people who matters for me, or who could promote my career or my place in the society but even then I have won many admirers and even critics. Secondly, when I started this activity, I was really happy. There was a different kind of feeling when I created this blog in hurry. I had been thinking of making a blog for more than six months. It was somewhere in the middle of 2004, I learned about blogging. I came on the cyberspace somewhere in the beginning of 2004 when I wrote on BBC/history site. I was well received there but soon BBC barred my entry to that portal. I lost whatever I had written there. But therein came a surprise. Some of the bloggers had picked my writings on BBC and placed it on their own blog. When I started blogging, I placed the copies of those postings on this very blog after giving due acknowledgement.


Before creating the blog, I came to realize about the significance of this device and activity through education forum. I must say that it was the teachers on the education forum discussing about e-learning, ICT and related topics which framed my understanding of the real core of this activity. I believe that in my success here, it is the success of education forum and to be precise of John Simkin who had virtually lifted me to the forum.


The format, contents, and display are also not my own creation. The template is given by the googles. But the contents are somewhere influenced by the activity as performed by Miland Brown on World History Blog. I have modified it and I believe that my blog is having its own character and shape but I must accept that somewhere, I am influenced by the activity as performed by Miland Brown on his blog. The idea of writing this post had been laid by him also. When I started blogging in February 2005, Miland Brown had already received more than six thousand visitors. Whenever I visited his blog and looked at the site meter and number on it, I became envious and jealous. I came across other blogs also which proudly displayed the number of visitors on their site. I had seen many respectable sites proudly displaying the number of visitors on their site. There was even a discussion on education forum on this issue. One thing is there that this particular number, that is number of visitors on the site is an important bench mark in the field of Information Technology, ITES and the very activity of blogging. There are sites like technorati which are totally devoted to maintaining such records. One can learn from there that there are sites and blogs which receive a huge rush of visitors to their site and people visit them every day. The advertisement decisions are based on figures generated by the number of visitors to a site. Hence, the very fact that a particular figure has been reached by a site has great value in the concerned field. Well, it was in those day, when I started blogging that one day Miland Brown announced proudly on his blog that he had crossed 10K mark. Presently his site meter is reading more than 2.8 million visitors. Now doubt, after that I came across many such bloggers, who had commemorated and celebrated the occasion when the number of visitors crossed a particular number on their site or blog. I believe that the decision of writing this post had been taken there and then and when I myself have reached this submit, though in two years, then I become authorized to write this post.


I am however not much happy with this figure. Firstly, I think that I should have crossed this figure within a year. Kenith Jones of Civil War Memory had reached this figure in less than a month. Secondly, the total is not created because of overall contents of the blog. It is three or four posts which have contributed to this number. I must reveal that it was in the month of June 2005, when I made a post on availability of short stories by Dhanpat Rai (Munshi Premchand). From that day onwards, the site meter had started galloping. Even now everyday, I receive visitors looking out for links for the short stories by Munshi Premchand. No doubt, It is quite surprising for me. There are many factors and figures which could be made out into a research paper which could be useful for publishers of hindi stories, hindi newspapers and cyber activity people. I even suggest to those who have read up to here that they may put a similar post on their blog and check the result on their own. The second post, which had become hyper activity around September 5, 2007, was a post on S. Radhakrishnan. The third most surprising post which regularly receive visitors are the posts on Teej. I am really amazed to learn that how much this festival is popular especially among the people living in other countries. Recently, the very first post on this blog which is about cell phones, which was not at all meant for this blog, had started receiving visitors. I think that use of cell phones in educational institution is definitely becoming a portent social issue.


I had desired to write on some issues in this posts. But I will not discuss it here. I believe that the rate at which I am receiving visitors, I will soon cross fifteen thousand mark before February 2008 which is the month of anniversary for this blog. I will like to discuss some important issues about which I have become aware through the experience of blogging at that time. Secondly, I believe that I must do some research and give some useful figures.


At the end, I would also like to declare that it is through blogging I have come to learn about using internet in the right manner. Here I will suggest to those who uses search engines for locating the desired information that they may use search engines for blogs also.