psilva's prophecies: social networks

Showing posts with label social networks. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

The Applications of Our Lives

The Internet of Things will soon become The Internet of Nouns

There are a few 'The ______ of Our Lives' out there: Days. Time. Moments. Love. They define who we are, where we've been and where we are going. And today, many of those days, times, moments and loves interact with applications. Both the apps we tap and the back end applications used to chronicle these events have become as much a part of our lives as the happenings themselves.

The app, Life.

As reported on umpteen outlets yesterday, Twitter went down for about an hour. As news broke, there were also some fun headlines like, Twitter goes down, chaos and productivity ensue, Twitter is down. NFL free agency should be postponed, Twitter is down, let the freak-out commence and Twitter goes down, helps man take note it’s his wife’s birthday. It is amazing how much society has come to rely on social media to communicate. Another article, Why Twitter Can’t Keep Crashing, goes right into the fact that it is globally distributed, real-time information delivery system and how the world has come to depend on it, not just to share links and silly jokes but how it affects lives in real ways.

Whenever Facebook crashes for any amount of time people also go crazy. Headlines for that usually read something like, 'Facebook down, birthdays/anniversaries/parties cease to exist!' Apparently since people can't tell, post, like, share or otherwise bullhorn their important events, it doesn't actually occur. 'OMG! How am I gonna invite people to my bash in two weeks without social media?!? My life is over!' Um, paper, envelopes, stamps anyone?

We have connected wrist bracelets keeping track of our body movements, connected glasses recording every move, connected thermostats measuring home environments and pretty much any other 'thing' that you want to monitor, keep track of or measure. From banking to buying, to educating to learning, to connecting to sharing and everything in between, our lives now rely on applications so much so, that when an application is unavailable, our lives get jolted. Or, we pause our lives for the moment until we can access that application. As if we couldn't go on without it. My, how application availability has become critical to our daily lives.

I think The Internet of Things will soon become The Internet of Nouns since every person, place or thing will be connected. I like that. I call 'The Internet of Nouns' as our next frontier!

Sorry adverbs, love ya but you're not connected.

ps

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Technorati Tags: apps,applications,social media,life,availability,twitter,facebook,society,humans,people,silva,f5,iot

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Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Multiscreen Multitasking

Talk about killing two birds with one stone - according to a Pew Internet & American Life Project report, more Americans on their phones while watching TV. About half of U.S. mobile phone owners use their devices while watching TV, a new study suggests. While most (38%) are clicking away as a commercial filler, many are enhancing their viewing experience by interacting along with the program.

About 23% of cellphone users exchange text messages with their friends about the same show they are simultaneously watching on TV; around 20% of them visit websites mentioned on TV; 22% used their phone to check whether something they heard on television was true; 11% of cellphone owners use their devices to read what others are writing online about a particular television program; another 11% posts comments on online boards using their cellphones; and 6% used their phone to vote for a reality show contestant. Both men and women equally are glued to their smartphone while watching TV with the 18-24 age bracket leading the way (81%), followed by the 25-34 group (72%).

The massive growth of smartphones and how we use them is infiltrating every aspect of our lives. The most basic task of making a phone call seems miniscule compared to the many other things we do with smartphones. Our personal devices are also becoming the primary mobile device we use for work with all the BYOD initiates being implemented. It’s also clear that with all the other tasks and activities we use our smartphones for, providing a solid BYOD policy within an organization is important to keeping corporate resources safe. Not sure how I turned the results of a TV survey into a BYOD challenge but there you have it. And somehow the famous words of Homer Simpson now have much more meaning, ‘Then we figured out we could park them in front of the TV. That's how I was raised, and I turned out TV.’

References:

Technorati Tags: F5, smartphone, integration, byod, Pete Silva, security, business, education, technology, application delivery,ipad,mobile device, context-aware,android, iPhone, web, internet, security

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Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Does Social Media Reflect Society?

A Community within our Society

You are what you eat; You become what you believe; I am not my art. A 2011 study from the University of Texas at Austin's Department of Psychology titled "Manifestations of Personality in Online Social Networks: Self-Reported Facebook-Related Behaviors and Observable Profile Information" found that Facebook users are no different online than they are offline. The study also declared a strong connection between someone’s real personality and their Facebook-related behavior. Social and personality processes, according to the study, accurately mirror non-virtual environments. It was published in the academic journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking. Professor Samuel D. Gosling and his team looked at the big five personality traits - openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism and found that self-reported personality traits are accurately reflected in online social networks such as Facebook. Extroverted users reported the most friends and the highest engagement while conscientious types had the least. Simply, extroverts engaged more than introverts.

Merriam-Webster defines society in part as, companionship or association with one's fellows : a voluntary association of individuals for common ends : an organized group working together or periodically meeting because of common interests, beliefs, or profession : an enduring and cooperating social group whose members have developed organized patterns of relationships through interaction with one another : a community, nation, or broad grouping of people having common traditions, institutions, and collective activities and interests.

Social media has changed society in many ways. We used to just live in a society – our neighborhood, town, city – and (hopefully) looked out for each other, cared for each other and got together for specific causes. This is our community. The human social creature needed human contact/interaction and participated within that society…but the circle was somewhat limited to a geographic region. Granted, some societies are nationwide clubs, groups, memberships or associations that span greater distances – Toastmasters, Kiwanis or college alumni for instance. Now, our circle of friends or association with one’s fellows requires no physical gathering. We live in our physical geographic society but also engage in our cyber communities that span cities, states, countries and with SETI, universes. Years ago I often wondered if the internet would create a society of hermits since no one really needed to go outside and interact with others in the real world. But we are social creatures and our survival requires us to participate in a non-cyber way. Of course there are people that do not want anything to do with society and live in secluded locations to avoid any human interaction. Most of us, however, like it or not, must interact in society on a daily basis.

Often our social cyber-interaction is in response to events in the physical society. We use social media as a way to report, learn and engage with those who are experiencing anything from turmoil to joy in their physical society. World events. Even the Occupiers, who have used social media to great extent, still came together physically – within their geographic circle(s) – to form their mini-societies. In some situations, social media has been the only avenue for ‘breaking’ news getting out to the masses. (Incidentally, it seems like every story on news websites is ‘breaking’ these days – it seems to have lost it’s power)

Breaking Bad, on the other hand, is a darn good show.

In societies we often share – information, goods, ideas, secrets – for the benefit of the society. Many of us have heard the warnings from security experts about keeping passwords a secret. Now, as a form of affection and devotion, teens are sharing their passwords to email, social networks and other accounts. Since it is risky and relationships can quickly sour via social media, they feel that the symbolism is powerful. Apparently, the world’s first divorce by Facebook occurred back in 2009 and more recently Deion Sanders announced his divorce on Facebook this past December. In addition, a survey conducted by UK divorce website www.divorce-online.co.uk in December 2009 found that 20% of behavior petitions contained the word “Facebook.” A follow up survey in December 2011 found that number has greatly increased during 2011 to 33% of behavior allegations in petitions.

Even the crooks are involved. We’ve seen the stories about hijacked accounts, malware distribution and the ever popular, ‘I’m stuck in some foreign country, lost my wallet and need to pay the hotel’ scam. I’m amazed that just a decade ago, security experts warned that you shouldn’t say, ‘We’re not home right now,’ on your answering machine. That tells riff-raff that the property is ripe for the pickings. Yet, just a few years later people are posting that they are over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house some 300 miles away. Their coordinates are available, their home town and sometimes a picture of the actual empty home are posted on the social network. And then they wonder how they could have been burglarized. It’s has also caught/captured the idiot criminals who feel the need to share their misdeeds. In some cases, we share too much and don’t even realize that we’re diminishing our own privacy. And, of course, there are some who can’t get enough exposure with 24 hour cams following their every move.

Social networks have become one of our society’s primary tools for communication and as a society it is important to communicate effectively. I’ve always felt that the internet, particularly the web, was a reflection of society. It’s chronicled, reflected and magnified our lives along with automatically storing and archiving almost every move we make. People have fallen in love, ordered goods, started movements, spread rumors, gotten arrested/fired/dumped, done banking, filed complaints/kudos, kept in touch, tracked progress, committed crimes, shared ideas and pretty much anything else that didn’t require physical contact. It’s our journal, reminder, mirror, confidant and has certainly wiggled it’s way into and become part of society. A community within our society. But remember, What Happens on the Internet, Stays on the Internet.

Technorati Tags: blog, social media, comscore, music, statistics, society, web traffic, digital media, mobile device, analytics

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Friday, September 9, 2011

From the Greenroom

If you even glanced at my blog last week you probably noticed a slew of videos from VMworld 2011. What was a simple idea a couple years ago – give people a taste of what we were up to at the various trade shows & highlight partners – has turned into a fun and exciting part of my job. I do hope they give you a flavor of what is happening on the show floor. While I try to schedule some interviews and topics prior to the show(s), many of the ‘on the spot’ videos truly are situations where I’m like, ‘ohhh, lets shoot that – ready?’ We do a little prep work especially for the whiteboard discussions but most of the time we just briefly chat about it and go live. Many times we nail it but sometimes a hiccup happens, mostly mine, which is why I also post the video outtakes at the end. I’ve always loved bloopers, even back when Dick Clark was pretending to laugh at all the flubs of 80’s TV. We’ll be shooting again in a few weeks at Oracle OpenWorld so if you’re around, stop by and say hi. I’ll even interview you if you like.

Over the next couple months, we’ll be posting a number of videos covering some v11 features like iApps and DNS Express along with series focusing on the many security solutions F5 offers. I also got a few ‘In 5 Minutes’ videos in the queue Video has certainly exploded over the last couple years and is an impactful way to communicate. Retailers are using video more on their ecommerce sites to help consumers make informed purchasing decisions. According to Forbes, video has graduated from a novelty to a mainstream method for execs in the C-Suite to get business information. According to comScore, in December 2010, the average American spent more than 14 hours watching online video, a 12-percent increase from the prior year, and streamed a record 201 videos, an 8-percent increase. And according to Nielsen, on a year-to-year basis, the number of people watching mobile video increased more than 43%, while the amount of time spent doing so was up almost 7% and over 180 million (86%) of the U.S. Internet audience viewed online video during July 2011. Viewers watch online video for an average of 18.5 hours per viewer and engaged in 6.9 billion viewing sessions.. Obviously, this trend will continue as more people turn to their mobile devices for entertainment and information.

I sometimes find it a little difficult to get into the writing groove again after a week of shooting so I’ll just end it here but thanks for watching and stay tuned for more.

Technorati Tags: F5, video, webmedia, ondemand, Pete Silva, security, business, education, technology, mobile, instructional, web, internet

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Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Our Digital Life Deciphered

comScore always has some very interesting statistics when measuring the digital world and these recent reports are no different. The 2010 U.S. Digital Year in Review has great info both in understanding media trends and knowing what the end user is actually doing out there. The 2010 Mobile Year in Review is also interesting in looking at mobile device and OS trends and the differences worldwide, both in models and what users are utilizing them for. There are tons of graphs and analysis covering areas like U.S. Retail E-Commerce Spending, Percent of Time Spent for Top 5 U.S. Web Properties, U.S. Unique Visitor Trend for Leading Social Networking Sites, Percent Share of Searches Among U.S. Core Search Engines, Growth in Total U.S. Online Video Market, Top Mobile Activities in the U.S. and many more.

These were a few that I found interesting - taken directly from the reports.

* 9 out of every 10 U.S. Internet users now visit a social networking site each month.

* Facebook now accounts for 12.3% of time spent online in the US - up 7.2% just a year ago.

* After Portals, Social Networking now ranks as the next most engaging activity at 14.4 percent of time spent online (up 3.8 percentage points), while Entertainment ranks third at 12.6 percent (up 0.8 percentage points). As communication continues to shift to other channels, including social media and mobile, usage of web-based email declined 1.5 percentage points to 11.0 percent of time spent.

* An average of 179 million Americans watch video each month and the average American spent more than 14 hours watching online video in December, a 12-percent increase from last year, and streamed a record 201 videos, an 8-percent increase.

* In September 2010, smartphone ownership crossed the 25 percent threshold, marking a significant milestone in smartphone adoption in the U.S. By December 2010, smartphone penetration had reached 27 percent of the mobile market.

* Samsung unseated last year’s OEM (original equipment manufacturer) leader, Motorola, to rank as top OEM provider with 24.8 percent of devices owned by mobile subscribers in December 2010, up 3.6 percentage points from the previous year.

Technorati Tags: blog, social media, comscore, music, statistics, blog traffic, web traffic, digital media, mobile device, analytics, video

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Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Best Day to Blog Experiment – The Results

Last week I did a little experiment to determine what is the best day of the week to blog, Monday thru Friday, that is. I’ve come across many stories about when is the best day/time to get the most readership exposure from a blog post and I posted a blog entry every day last week to conduct my own little brief, non-scientific experiment. So what is the best day to blog? Depends. Monday, Wednesday or Thursday all had the best results but in some cases, it depended on the post location. I even waited until mid-week to post these results, based on last week’s experiment. My primary blog is on F5’s DevCentral community site but I also push content out to WordPress, Blogger, Posterous, PodBean and Ulitzer. I usually track through Google analytics but some sites have their own statistical reporting. So let’s get to the charts.

This first one shows the results of my DevCentral blog from Subtext, a popular open source blogging platform. Here, Thursday was easily the winner but Monday also drew a good crowd. I also think Thursday might have been higher due to folks checking out the previous days they may have missed. I’ve noticed that when doing a blog series, if you include the previous entries as reference, those get good traction days after their initial post.

Next is the Google Analytics results of the same DevCentral blog. They count slightly differently but you can see that Thursday was still the most popular day by a smidgen, with the rest of the week holding it’s own along with the expected Friday drop. That’s one thing I can say with certainty is that Friday wasn’t the best day to blog. My weekly visits were up 22% which was somewhat expected and bounce rate down. One benefit of blogging every day.

This chart is from my Wordpress blog and as you can see, mid-week were all equal and contradicted the rest of the locations and my previous paragraph about Friday being slow. Here, Friday was the most attended day. It seemed people were catching up since there were reads on Friday of the previous day’s entries.

These are the numbers from Ulitzer (sys-con) and they keep the same trend – Monday and Thursday doing well with Tuesday sneaking in the middle. Historically I’ve done most of my posts on Tuesday or Wednesday but am now thinking that more like Wednesday or Thursday might be slightly better. I’m going to keep looking at these over the next few months.

This chart is from Podbean, yet another location that I syndicate to. I also host my Audio Whitepapers on Podbean. Once again, Thursday wins with Wednesday and Monday following. Seeing a trend yet?

And finally Posterous – which is actually a pretty cool blogging platform and also hosts a bunch of Audio, Video and other multimedia types. This one bucks the trend but these are overall views rather than just the daily, which might explain Monday being on top since it had been out there longer.

Conclusion? For me, during this very limited experiment it is clear that Thursday or Monday receive the most reads with Tuesday and Wednesday holding their own. I’d probably have to watch over weeks and months to clearly say which day is the best but this is a start. I’m not sure if the content was any better or worse for each day but next time, I’m going to try posting every day with various topics, not a ‘This is a Test’ blog every day. Regardless, I got some interesting data and hope this helps you when determining when to post. You might be wondering why I’m not waiting until tomorrow (Thursday) to post this since the data indicates I’ll have more traffic. One, I didn’t want to wait; two, this was ready to go today and; three, one of the main things I came away with is that it if you have interesting, timely, engaging content, it really doesn’t matter when you post. We blog because we enjoy it. We blog because want to share something interesting. We blog to provide insight about the latest news, whatever that might be. We blog to engage in a conversation with our social community. We blog because it is kinda fun – and having fun in life, no matter what day of the week is important to our existence. Thanks for playing along and participating in my first annual ‘Best Day to Blog Experiment.’ You, the readers, make this blog enjoyable.

twitter: @psilvas

Technorati Tags: blog,social media,monday,music,statistics,blog traffic,web traffic,best day to blog,best day to publish,analytics,silva

Friday, November 12, 2010

The Best Day to Blog Experiment - Day 5

This is a test of the Emergency Blogcast System. The blogger in your area has developed this test to keep you informed in the event of a blog abnormality. If this had been an actual blog emergency, you would have been offered a highlighted link to click for further instructions. This concludes this test of the Emergency Blogcast System.

If you missed the past week, welcome to The Best Day to Blog Experiment and thanks for your participation, I do appreciate it. I’m conducting a brief, non-scientific experiment. The idea was to blog everyday this week, track the results and report back. This is Day 5, the last day of the experiment and so far Day 1 (Monday) got some good traction, Day 2 (Tuesday) grew with a 6.5% jump in visits over Monday, Day 3 (Wednesday) was down 4% from Tuesday but still had a decent showing and Day 4 (Thursday) was up 5% over Wednesday. It pretty much follows the same pattern as other ‘best day’ studies have shown.

Friday, the end of the school and work week in many countries and even has it’s own catch phrase – TGIF. For those superstitious folks, there’s an interesting anomaly about Friday according to Wikipedia, ‘The use of the Gregorian calendar and its leap year system results in a small statistical anomaly, that the 13th of any month is slightly more likely to fall on a Friday than any of the other six days. The figures are 688/4800 (43/300) which is .1433333..., being greater than 1 in 7 by just 0.3%.’ Friday blog entries still get attention and statistically get about the same as a Monday post. What I did find interesting, is this study (pdf) from Carnegie Mellon which found that if efficiency is your goal, the very best day to read a blog is Friday. They say that the logic might be that since bloggers tend to blog less often on Friday, the content that is posted might be more focused and informative – either that or there is less to choose from and you find the really good ones.

Since it is Friday, I’m not going to babble on about blog traffic and just get right to the ‘Songs about the Day,’ a recurring theme for this blog experiment. All week, I’ve used The Y! Radish’s blog about ‘songs with days in the title’ and he has a decent Top 10 list for every day, including Friday. But for today, I found another list from PopCultureMadness which lists a bunch of Friday songs.

Another Friday Night - Chris Knight
Another Friday Night - Embrace Today
Black Friday - Steely Dan
Every Friday Afternoon - Craig Morgan
Every Other Friday At Five - Trace Adkins
Freaky Friday - Aqua
Freaky Friday Baby One More Time - Bowling For Soup
Friday - Autograph
Friday - Bowling For Soup
Friday - Daniel Bedingfield
Friday - Ice Cube
Friday - J.J. Cale
Friday - Joe Jackson
Friday Child - Nancy Sinatra
Friday Face - Richie Spice
Friday Fun - The Donnas
Friday I'm In Love - The Cure
Friday Night - Click Five
Friday Night - The Darkness
Friday Night - Kids From Fame
Friday Night - Lily Allen
Friday Night - McFly
Friday Night - The Monarchs
Friday Night Blues - John Conlee
Friday Night In Dixie - Rhett Atkins
Friday Night On A Dollar Bill - Huelyn Duvall
Friday Night Saturday Morning - The Specials
Friday On My Mind - David Bowie
Friday On My Mind - Easybeats
Friday On My Mind - Gary Moore
Friday Street - Paul Weller
Friday You Said Goodbye - Jerry Cox
Friday's Angels - Generation X
Get 'Em Out By Friday - Genesis
Good Friday - Guttermouth
Good Mourning/Black Friday - Megadeth
It's Finally Friday - George Jones
Keep Their Heads Ringin' (It's Friday) - Dr Dre
Living It Up (Friday Night) - Bell and James
Monday Like A Friday - Andre Nickatino & Equipto
Mr. Friday Night - DJ Cally
One February Friday - Frankie Goes To Hollywood
Party People... Friday Night - 911
She Left Me On Friday - Shed Seven
Thank God It's Friday - R. Kelly

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Technorati Tags: blog,social media,monday,music,statistics,blog traffic,web traffic,best day to blog,best day to publish,analytics,silva

Thursday, November 11, 2010

The Best Day to Blog Experiment - Day 4

If you missed the past three days, welcome to The Best Day to Blog Experiment; you are now a participant. If you are a returning reader, thanks for your participation and for the first time readers, I’ve come across many stories about when is the best day/time to get the most readership exposure from a blog post and I’m doing my own little brief, non-scientific experiment. The idea was to blog everyday this week, track the results and report back. Mahalo for becoming a statistic, and I mean that in the most gracious way. This is Day 4 of the experiment and so far Day 1 (Monday) got some good traction, Day 2 (Tuesday) grew with a 6.5% jump in visits over Monday while Day 3 (Wednesday) is down 4% from Tuesday but still a decent showing – plus my week is up 37% over the previous.

Thursday, is the day before Friday and NBC’s ‘Must See TV’ for many years. As with Wednesday, the name comes from the Anglo-Saxons to signify that this is Thunor's or Thor’s day. Both gods are derived from Thunaraz, god of thunder. Supposedly, Thursday is the best day to post a blog entry. This article (different from the last link) also says that, ‘between 1pm and 3pm PST (after lunch) or between 5pm and 7pm PST (after work) are the best times…and the worst time to post is between 3 and 5 PM PST on the weekends.’ Those articles have a bunch of charts showing traffic patterns to indicate that this is the day. There is some wonder about this, however. Yesterday I mentioned that it might not be the actual day at all, but about knowing when your audience is visiting and making sure content is available before they arrive. Also, if you are only worried about traffic stats and how many subscribers you have, rather than timely engaging content, then you would worry about dropping words on a certain day. If you are creating insightful material, then the readers will find you no matter what day you post. Danny Brown points out that with social media tools like Digg, Stumbleupon and Reddit, and sharing sites like Facebook and Twitter, the blog post can live much longer than the initial push.

There’s also a distinction between a personal and business blog. With a personal blog, much of the focus is sharing ideas or writing about some recent personal experience. I realize that’s an oversimplification and there’s much more to it than that, but the day you post might not really matter. With a business blog, often you are covering a new feature of a product, how some new-fangled thing impacts a business, reporting on a press release and basically extending the company’s message. In this case, timely blogs are important since your audience might be looking for just that – how to solve something today or to understand the ramifications of some new regulation or other areas of interest. It’s important for a company to get a jump on these stories and show thought leadership. Also, depending on your industry, most of your colleagues will also be on the Mon-Fri work schedule and you want to catch them when they are digging for answers. Of course, this is not set in stone but is the prevailing notion of those who cover ‘blogging.’ Personally, I only write what would be considered a business blog for F5 Networks with a focus on Security, Cloud Computing and a bit about Social Media but cover just about whatever I feel is appropriate, including pop culture. As a writer and a human, my experiences are gathered over time and influenced by both my upbringing and professional endeavors. I try to bring a bit of who I am rather than what I do to my posts and typically write when inspiration hits.

Going back to Danny Brown for a moment, he notes that it’s the writer who makes the blog and we do it because we like it. Communicate with your readers, share with the community and write engaging content and you’ll have visitors and readers no matter what day of the week it gets posted.

If you’ve followed this mini-series, you’ll know that ‘Songs about the Day’ is a recurring theme during this blog experiment. All week, I’ve used The Y! Radish’s blog about ‘songs with days in the title’ and for the 4th time in as many days, I’m ‘lifting’ his list for songs about Thursday.

Top 10 Songs About Thursday

   1. Thursday - Asobi Seksu
   2. Thursday - Morphine
   3. Thursday - Country Joe & The Fish
   4. Thursday The 12th - Charlie Hunter
   5. Thursday's Child - Eartha Kitt
   6. Thursday - Jim Croce
   7. Thursday's Child - David Bowie
   8. (Thursday) Here's Why I Did Not Go To Work Today - Harry Nilsson
   9. Sweet Thursday - Pizzicato Five
   10. Jersey Thursday - Donovan

I know it’s a stretch but my favorite Thursday song is God of Thunder – KISS.

twitter: @psilvas

Technorati Tags: blog,social media,monday,music,statistics,blog traffic,web traffic,best day to blog,best day to publish,analytics,silva

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

The Best Day to Blog Experiment - Day 3

If you missed the past two days, welcome to The Best Day to Blog Experiment; you are now a participant. For the first time readers, I’ve come across many stories about when is the best day/time to get the most readership exposure from a blog post and I figured I’d do my own little brief, non-scientific experiment. The idea is to blog everyday this week, track the results and report back next week. Thanks for becoming a statistic. Yesterday, I noted that it was important to have a good opening line to grab your readers, yet I’ve repeated this exact opening 3 days in a row. I’m wondering if this will have any influence on the results. I guess that’s part of the test – follow the rules, break the rules and see what happens. I’m now on Day 3 of the experiment and so far Day 1 (Monday) actually got some good traction and Day 2 (Tuesday) is trending well with a 6.5% jump in visits over Monday. Bounce Rate and Time on Site are also in the positive day over day. I’m tweeting the post(s) a couple times a day to catch folks all over. I do this sometimes, especially if I post late in the day – I’ll tweet the link out early the next morning hoping to catch readers who might have missed it the previous afternoon or re-tweet late in the day if I’ve posted very early. Oh and by the way, I really want to thank those of you who are playing along at home – without you, I’d have no data.

Welcome to Wednesday, hump-day, mid-week and originally Woden’s Day, for the Anglo-Saxon god Woden. Wednesday is also a very good day to post a blog according to a few reports and it happens to be one of the more likely days that a reader would comment. Like Tuesday, posting mid-week allows readers to find the entry even if they miss the initial syndication. I’ve read that both Tuesday and Thursday are the best days to post a blog, so sitting in the middle of the two should garner results, right? Lorelle VanFossen, who writes about blogging says that sometimes it isn’t about when you post but it’s about when the most people visit your blog. She notes that while certain days do draw more viewers in general, knowing when the best day/time to post is more about understanding which day of the week your traffic levels will be highest and making sure content is available during those times or; post your ‘most poignant’ content during that window. Another interesting angle is that we train our audience when to show up, so the actual day might not matter. If you blog every day and your readers have been trained to watch for it daily, when you miss a few days without notice, folks wonder what happened. I’ve mentioned that I usually post either on Tuesday or Wednesday and I’m guessing that is when my readers ‘look’ for content. It makes sense then, that a post on Friday probably won’t (and it hasn’t) gain views since my regular readers are not looking for it then. If they do come across it, it might not get the depth or engagement since the weekend is right around the corner. I’ll be watching for that 2 days from now. It’s interesting so far that what started as a simple test to determine the best day to blog, has generated more observations and additional questions along the way – meaning, things I didn’t consider at the start are becoming interesting to watch as this moves along.

The recurring part that’s also been fun is adding ‘Songs about the Day’ as a theme during this blog experiment – thinking it might be the one consistent part that ties this series together. All week, I’ve used The Y! Radish’s blog about ‘songs with days in the title’ and am going to once again ‘lift’ his list for songs about Wednesday.

Top 10 Songs About Wednesday

   1. Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. - Simon & Garfunkel
   2. Ash Wednesday - Elvis Perkins
   3. Wednesday - Tori Amos
   4. Wednesday Week - The Undertones
   5. Wednesday - Drive-By Truckers
   6. Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting - Charles Mingus
   7. Wednesday Morning - America
   8. (April) Spring, Summer, And Wednesdays - Status Quo
   9. Wednesday Night Waltz - Chet Atkins
   10. Wednesday Week - Elvis Costello

and my favorite Wednesday song: It's Only Wednesday – Crash Kings

twitter: @psilvas

Technorati Tags: blog,social media,monday,music,statistics,blog traffic,web traffic,best day to blog,best day to publish,analytics,silva

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

The Best Day to Blog Experiment - Day 2

If you missed yesterday’s blog entry, welcome to The Best Day to Blog Experiment; you are now a participant. As I mentioned just one day ago, I’ve come across many stories about when is the best day/time to get the most readership exposure from a blog post and I figured I’d do my own little brief, non-scientific experiment to see. The idea is to blog everyday this week, track the results and report back next week. Thanks for becoming a statistic. Smile

Tuesday, which can feel like a Monday to some folks – just read those Facebook entries – is typically a good day to blog and gain readership. The Monday blues are gone and folks are really getting into their work week. The day that you post can have a big impact on how many folks will read it. Tuesday is the day I usually post since I read that Tuesday is the best day to post a blog. It wasn’t in that linked article but I couldn’t find the original story claiming such. I can say that I’ve had good success posting on Tuesdays. I try to get it up early enough in the day to catch East coast readers and usually no later than 2pm PST. Posting on Tuesday allows readers an entire week to catch/find it along with time to bookmark, comment and respond to comments before the weekend – when traffic drops off. Depending on your blog topic, the weekend is usually a very slow time for blog readership, except for sports and other ‘weekend’ related events. The one advantage, as noted by Darren Rowse, is that it might be easier to crack the front page of Digg since there is less competition. Tuesday is also the most active day for RSS feeds, according to this story, which is a few years old. I looked for more recent stats regarding RSS with limited success but the notion (at least in 2005) is that since RSS is busy, then blogs are getting read – either a perusal or full engagement.

I alluded on Day 1, that the topic and content needs to be interesting, engaging and timely. You need a good title as a hook along with an inviting opening to draw your readers deeper. Not sure I’m accomplishing that with this test since the titles will be identical throughout the week, except for the ‘day’ notation. That’ll be interesting to watch – if similar titles still draw viewers or they’ll think that it’s the one they read the day before. Maybe they’ll just think I’m lazy but I do believe I’ve had some decent titles over the years. Who can complain about, The New Certificate 2048 My Performance, A is for Application, J is for Jacked, Dumpster Diving vs. The Bit Bucket or Yelling ‘WebApp Firewall’ in a Crowded Data Center. Blogs also need a point – why else would you read it? A good title and opening line with junk after, only makes your bounce rate jump. I usually try to include some bit of info that the reader can use today or relate it to a common scenario we’ve all faced. When writing about information security, sometimes it’s beneficial or easier to understand when explained in a manner that everyone, not just IT admins, would understand. I guess that’s it for today’s inclusion since it is 9:30am PST and I want to get this out. Day 1 got posted around 12:30pm PST and I want to stagger the times over the week to test that too.

Many radio stations around the country use Tuesday to play double-shots of our favorite artists and dub it ‘Two-for-Tuesday.’ I’ve somehow shoved ‘Songs about the Day’ as a theme during this blog experiment – thinking it might be the one consistent part that ties them together. We’ll see. Yesterday I used The Y! Radish’s blog about Monday songs and am going to ‘lift’ his list again for songs about Tuesday.

Top 10 Songs About Tuesday

   1. Ruby Tuesday - The Rolling Stones
   2. Tuesday's Gone - Lynyrd Skynyrd
   3. Tuesday Afternoon (Forever Afternoon) - The Moody Blues
   4. They Call It Stormy Monday (But Tuesday's Just As Bad) - T-Bone Walker
   5. On A Tuesday In Amsterdam Long Ago - Counting Crows
   6. Tuesday Heartbreak - Stevie Wonder
   7. Tuesday's Dead - Cat Stevens
   8. Tuesday Morning - Michelle Branch
   9. Tuesday Morning - The Pogues
   10. Tuesday At Ten - Count Basie

twitter: @psilvas

Technorati Tags: blog,social media,monday,music,statistics,blog traffic,web traffic,best day to blog,best day to publish,analytics,silva

Monday, November 8, 2010

The Best Day to Blog Experiment–Day 1

Welcome to Monday, typically the day most workers dread but with that extra hour of sleep yesterday, you’re amazingly refreshed aren’t you? I don’t mind the ‘practice Sunday’ for the spring forward event but wonder with the fall back, what if you waited and changed the clocks on Sunday eve – how early everyone would be for work! But I digress. Also, Welcome to The Best Day to Blog Experiment; you are now a participant. I toyed with The Great Blog Experiment, but ‘great’ might be stretching it. Nevertheless - I do hope to get some decent data to report back next week. I’ve read various stories about when is the best time and day to get the most readership exposure from a blog post. Now of course, content plays a big role in what readers are interested in but, as I’ve mentioned before, I’ve found that something I think is awesome, sometimes doesn’t always translate to a huge pick up in the blogosphere. So I figured I’d do my own little brief, non-scientific experiment to see. I’m curious that way. I’ll probably just use Google Analytics to track trends. The idea is to blog everyday this week and track the results. I normally only blog once or twice a week so this will be interesting – not like Mrs. MacVittie who can crank out 9 or 10. You go Lori! Maybe I’ll ask her to compare data when this is done since she does have a wide readership. We participate in a lot of social media activities here at F5 and like most SM conscious companies, we analyze our content and look to ways for increasing our reach.

Statistically speaking, Monday is not a bad day to post a blog. I would have thought that Monday might be challenging to get an audience since folks are focusing on the work week, catching up on things that got left behind the previous week and going through email. It might also be a time when people are looking for stories or solutions to the things they need to complete that week. You might also be checking your favorite blogger, one that you read often or subscribe to since it is part of your weekly reading anyway. As far as times, some feel that after lunch (Pacific Zone) is one of the best times to post. It’s toward the end of the day out East and maybe those West-coasters need some reading dessert before cranking out the afternoon. The other thing about Monday is depending on your worldwide audience, Monday might be their 2nd day of work for that week since some countries start the work week on Sunday.

Well, that’s about it for Day 1 and I’m really not sure yet what I’ll write tomorrow, except that I was thinking of including the best songs about the particular post day – yeah, maybe that’ll generate traffic. So, here are the top 10 songs about Monday according to The Y! Radish, who also says that the average person will experience 4040 Mondays in their life.

twitter: @psilvas

Technorati Tags: blog,social media,monday,music,statistics,blog traffic,web traffic,best day to blog,best day to publish,analytics,macvittie,silva

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The Best Day to Blog Experiment - Day 2

Monday, November 8, 2010

The Best Day to Blog Experiment–Day 1

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