A Smaller Number
One thing you’ll notice as that the homepage of now shows a much smaller number than it used to:
Before Change
After Change
Can you spot the difference?
Before we used to highlight the total number of blogs on WordPress.com, and then later added the new posts and words numbers. But what was weird that total was blogs across all time, and the other numbers were daily. I felt like it didn’t really give an accurate representation of the true activity happening on WordPress.com.
The new number is a stat we track of active logged-in WordPressers interacting with the site. It’s an average over the last few days so is more of a daily number like the other ones.
Now 163,702 is much less impressive sounding than 5.2 million, but that’s okay.
What’s truly impressive is what you guys are creating every day, not some arbitrarily large or small number on our homepage.
(If you’re curious about any of the public stats for WordPress.com we have a page of them here.)
- January 9, 2009
- Stats, WordPress.com
WordPress.com News 
250 words is maybe three short paragraphs with enough words to make any sense about one thing. This is an average, and there must be many posts with far fewer words and many with quite a few more. Can you tell us what word count gets the biggest average of hits? I guess a short post that focuses on a single topic is probably easiest to read, but it takes more than a few words to develop a theme or tell a good story. I hope the short average word count is not going to contribute to a general reduction in readers’ and writers’ attention spans. Ok, I’m finished now!
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We don’t have any stats that would demonstrate a direct correlation between word count and page views. I’d go with quality as a personal measure 🙂
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I wish there was also a count of images, not just words – my blog is a photoblog, and sometimes I barely write any text at all, but I always post photos! 🙂
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Wow! Impressive stats!
-Woton
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I really like the change!
YAY FOR ACCURACY!!
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They (whomever “they” may be – but, apparently a Nemertes Representative) say that by 2012 the demand for internet band-width could exceed capacity.
In any event, I feel that this number creates a more impressive sense of what we are doing as a Blogging community on a daily basis.
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Wow 250 is a pretty short blog. Most of mine are usually around 700.
Jordan
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HAHAHA, OH WOW.
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wow .. ^^
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I am not sure that I agree with Matt about 600,000 blogs receiving 60+ views every day. I know that I surely do not receive this type of traffic even though i wish I did.
Oops, crash outside the house type more later.
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Thank you wery 🙂
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thank you for your update.
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Cool !
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Thank you. I believe it is much more informative like this.
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Nice post matt! and cool avatar 😛 I wonder how many views all the wordpress blogs get, (all blogs added up) that would be a huge number!!!
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Wooaah… this is great !
Congrats and keep growing !!
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I have been active on WordPress for 8 months. Why does my comment need moderation,particularly when it is germane to the subject?
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All comments on the WordPress News blog require moderation. Thanks for your patience.
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Is there somewhere else we can view the total number of blogs? I’m continually asked if WordPress MU scales and that number has been VERY helpful in putting those questions to rest. The stats page only shows a graph instead of the actual number. It would be pretty interesting to have the latest value for each of the graphs listed next to it.
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Thanks for your suggestion. You should be able to get a pretty good idea about the numbers from the graphs.
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Hmmm, strange. You have twice Polish in language stats.
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Thanks for pointing that out. I’ve corrected that. 0.4% is the correct value for Polish language blogs 🙂
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I hate math lol. But thats an interesting post. I like your picture did you take it?
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Thanks for the change. The number of bloggers means more to me than the number of blogs.
How many here know that print (paper) publishers of fiction often consider the average page to contain 250 words? I think that’s an interesting coincidence.
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It is still impressive; it suggests that WordPress users are consistent in their usage, which is I imagine a pretty tough thing to achieve for a blogging site. People still take time out of their busy schedules to post everyday!
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I look at those status everyday and I notice it has been going down for the blog status…. Well I’m just glad that you guys don’t really care that much about it. 😉
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I don’t see the Japanese language in that stat page you link here. I remember that language was used here, though. What’s the reason?
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The WordPress.com Stats page only lists a break down of the top 20 languages.
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well thats because the old one was better
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Wow! A lot of blogs 🙂
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I’m your new Member, Welcome or quit??
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Wow, that’s suprising. And a lot of words!
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Quality over quantity anytime!
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Matt, Indonesian bloggers is waiting for you!
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This is a really good move. Since at one point I was sending in about 10 splog notices a day, some of which resulted in dozens of blogs being suspended, it always puzzled me why the number of blogs was even mentioned.
Showing how many real people are working on real blogs by wordpress.com is the way to go.
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More dynamic 🙂
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I like the change WordPress. Keep up the good work!
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wooow…
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Awesome (Y) ! WordPress is my just another website since it’s a deep well with the number of blogger!
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ouaou !!!
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that is GREAT !
wordpress is very nice (;
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WORDPRESS IS NUMBER 1!!!
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joy forever to see it flourishing 🙂
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I think the shift is good.
Too many people place value on some of these statistics, especially the wrong ones.
These ones seem much more “real”.
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That’s sounds better
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Numbers are not important, but the meaning they convey is important :).
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Quality>Quantity
-Toretto
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5,213,006 blogs? gosh that is a lot of blogs! mabye it would be best if the bloggers only had 1 blog don’t you think? anyway, that is a lot of words! I wonder how many words or posts on the weekends?
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Kinda like MCyDees 1000000000000000000000000000000000 gazillion served.
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Gettysburg Address: 272 words.
Average number of words on a book page: 250
Average reading/talking speed: 120 per minute
What’s the average time for a visit to a webpage? I’d bet it’s a couple of minutes.
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Very interesting use of numbers. Unlike most stats people you seem to have used them to show a more realistic picture as to what is happening on WordPress
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Awesome, looks much better. I like the “real” statistics vs. the dead/abandoned blogs! Keep up the great work!!
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Amazing Stats. Its not the number that counts but what’s in it rite? Quality is better than quantity.
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That is Strange Matt, I noticed that too 250 Words per post seems to be what I post each time even odder that it feels sometimes that I rant on a lot longer! These new numbers are much easier to understand and still really impressive!
Thanks
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Woah… that is quite an impressive stats. We are growing! 🙂
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Thanks WP!
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Wow – and I was celebrating that 1,015 people read my blog – the entire time it’s been in WordPress. I guess how it all starts!
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You guys should release the erased blogs to new registrations
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pretty clever analysis
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i like the numbers analysis
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very honest of you. nice bit of PR as well hehe
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do you track images too?? Just wondering, us artists like pictures!
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We have stats for file uploads, which are posted monthly. That includes images, songs, videos, all that good stuff 🙂
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ohhh thats good
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nice 🙂
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pretty cool. good to know. 🙂
i ❤ wordpress. i have to blogs and find them fun to have.
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That’s fantastic, thanks wordpress.
Is there any chance after a certain amount of time the blog that are inactive can be deleted?
Say… ‘If you don’t log in within say 6 months, your account will be terminated’ ……
I mean put it in your terms and conditions, it’s fair ? no ?
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Sorry, but no, we don’t have any plans to change our policy of not allowing blog names and user names to be recycled.
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Two really useful public stats for the blog community, I think it would be to monitor the number of blogs that are “active” and then number of blogs that are “alive”.
Since blogging has evolved a long way from a daily diary, and many blogs include material that will be relevant to read months or even years after it was published, even if the blog is no longer filled with new stuff, I propose you should count and show in WP home page:
a) No of Blogs “active” (where an active blog is any blog that had a publication in, say, the last three months, even if it had not one visitor)
b) No of Blogs “alive” (where a blog is alive if it has been visited at least once in, say, the last three months, even if it had not one publication).
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We currently show active stats in our monthly and yearly wrapups. Thanks for your suggestion about “alive” stats.
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Nice work Matt!
A Portuguese Hug to you! 🙂
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I guess I’m bringing that average words per posts number down. Always under 100. Never more. I guess someone out there is averaging over 400 to balance me out.
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Hmmm… I think I get a bit Hemingway with my posts… They are much longer than 250 words usually. I write for myself and if others want to read it than that’s fine with me. Might not help with building traffic, but I’m learning other ways to do that.
I have 6 blogs… one I use as a static website (though I do add posts to it occasionally), one I feel like I will use in the furture, and one I want to take down because I created it accidentally when I was first learning.
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Big numbers 😉
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Ah, I am still starting! Anyway, it’s a great idea! Thanks!
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Amazing!
how technology is gripping us and how more and more of us talk to the computer rather than people 😛
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It would be even more interesting if you could drill down to how many blogs post daily, then weekly. In any case….nice work!
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I think much people create a some blogs and later they ll use 2 or 3 blogs.
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yea that more accurate. great work WP!
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keep up the good work 🙂
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Nice change, Matt. I want to point out to those who are cavalierly pushing to “weed out” inactive bloggers: anyone who runs a self-hosted WordPress site (that is, downloads the software and uses it on their own ISP) is also using Akismet–provided they do not have an insane affinity for comment spam! In order to get an activation key for Akismet, we have to have an account at WordPress.com. It’s a reasonable requirement, but it does mean that I have a “blog” here that has one entry and one comment.
They are by (okay, everyone, shout it in unison) MR. WORDPRESS.
If WordPress.com started pulling out accounts like mine, they’d have a huge problem with inactivating those Akismet keys.
I love WordPress, and I love all of you, and I love the joys (and pains) of maintaining and customizing my various sites. 🙂
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Nice. Cos I am actually proud to be within a group of professionals.
You guys +gals are the best!
The number will grow. No sweat.
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Will it ever be possible to have plug-ins for the free WordPress blogs, as it would be great to utilse the facility to add Digg buttons that require Javascript, if that’s the right jargon – CSS and the like is a bizarre new world for me!
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Javascript is not allowed, but you can still post social media buttons. Try Add This. CSS can be pretty fun, check out the CSS resources listed at the Custom CSS support page if you are interested in learning more about CSS.
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I do appreciate your work. I like very much wordpress.com. It gives the incentive to write and research. Many bloggers, many blogs. The aim should be to have e-books at the end. All languages, all themes. It is really a universal library. People feel like working for others and for oneself. Putting ideas on the Internet is amazing. Publishing books today is costly, distributing them is laborious. New creative ways of doing this sort of work are welcome!
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Yep, lovin the accuracy, keep it up.
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blogs and users and comments going down,Improve more!
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Yep, definitely a much more useful, informative and even “scientific” (thinking about statistics) number. Good election!
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Its still a lot of blogs! i never even noticed the change – until now.
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Hope this doesn’t anger the investors…
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Hey. Thanks for the stats update. As someone who blogs daily, and who uses a lot more than 250 words (I know, I’m a blonger), I now know that I’m not competing with millions and millions (as Carl Sagan used to say) for that all-elusive goal of fastest-growing blog.
But thanks for a great service no matter where I end up in the hierarchy. Word Press really is very user friendly.
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That’s a good job. I’ve noticed a few inactive blogs on WordPress. The stats are representing now the active bloggers. It is really great. But in stats is it possible to view the unique visitors per day ?
Keep up the good work!
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Right now, you can just see total pageviews in the Blog Stats section, but we are working on stats updates. Watch the WordPress.com blog for updates.
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I made two posts today; one about 100 words and the other several hundred. I’ve done my part for January 19, 2009!
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Hi Matt and Team, just wanted to say thank you for giving us all the opportunity to express our words and views into the world with our blogs, love the word…
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Increible… good Idea….
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highly appreciating the briefing. thanx
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…and we thought Squidoo was a blast! This is great no matter what our number is…although…
anyway…we’re so happy to be here and look forward to learning more about optimizing our
world on WordPress!
Cheers.
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Since we’re discussing word count totals here, is there a way to find the total number of words posted on any one blog? The administrator can see the word count for each post, but there doesn’t appear to be a blog total anywhere.
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Good suggestion. We’ll look into that.
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hi bloggers
I’ve only very recently joined you and I’m still finding my way around the dashboard. I sometimes feel like a dumb explorer in a perplexing Alice in Wonderland world where I feel like I’m talking to myself! My blog is called citizen engagement and I’ve managed to attract 62 (very modest) hits and I’m having fun finding my way 🙂
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Numbers are what they are and may or may not be meaningful to each of us as individuals. Personally, I am just ecstatic to have found WordPress! In the week or so that I have been part of this amazing community I have found a voice and a gallery to create. When people ask me why I am so happy, I smile and say WordPress!!
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We write, they read. The world is good
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Wow
That means I have a lot of catching up to do and lots more to type!
😀
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1.4M active blogs in a month???? Whoahhh! Well, this is because wordpress has user-friendly applications, nice updated themes and more… what else can we ask for? Cheers!
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