Image by WordPress.com by the Numbers: The February Hot List
February was another eventful month at WordPress.com. Here’s the lowdown on what we’ve all been up to.
It might be the shortest month of the year, but that certainly didn’t stop WordPress.com users from making February another month to remember. Frigid weather, suspenseful curling matches, The Lego Movie: nothing could keep you away from your sites. Enjoy this winter tale of blogging success.
The blog’s the thing
We were joined this month by no fewer than 1,670,000 new sites and blogs — that’s almost three times the population of Wyoming. Welcome, welcome, welcome.
Old bloggers or new, you set to work with zeal: you wrote nearly 40,000,000 posts this month (if each stood for an hour, it would be enough time to walk to the sun — and back). You made sure not to miss a beat by tapping away on your devices: 2,230,000 posts were published on iPhones and iPads, about a million on your Android devices, and nearly 200,000 came from the BlackBerry crowd.
A contribution to The Daily Post’s recent photo challenge, Threes, by rodocarda.
In case you were curious — we know you were! — you collectively wrote 9.4 billion words. That would roughly be the word count in Shakespeare’s collected plays — if the Bard had the stamina to write them 10,000 times.
As always, you weren’t exactly shy engaging with your fellow bloggers. You liked their posts 7,300,000 times, and left more than 48,000,000 comments.
Is that a widget that I see before me?
Your sidebars got some serious love this month, with 1,360,000 widgets added. The most popular ones? Text Widgets with 145,000, followed by 94,000 Image Widgets.
You also made your posts come alive, embedding 11,600,000 YouTube videos, 3,000,000 image galleries, and 265,000 SoundCloud tracks.
Now Is the Winter of Our Disco Tent
Yes, for those of us who live in the Northern Hemisphere, February was cold (please don’t gloat, Floridians). Which might explain the 24,659 posts tagged with winter and the 942 with polar vortex. The daydreamers among us wrote 4,861 posts about the sun, and 416 about Barbados (rumor has it the piña coladas are better in the latter).
Of course, winter is always coming for Game of Thrones fans, who, as loyal as direwolves, wrote 1,553 posts about a show that isn’t starting until April.
A contribution to The Daily Post’s recent photo challenge, Treasure, by theweeklyminute.
February was dominated by talk of Sochi (10,587 posts) and the Olympics (16,283). For some unfathomable reason, more bloggers published about hockey (a stunning 77,218 posts) than about curling (1,117). Then again, more posts were written about Lego (1,972) than about curling, probably because it’s harder to blog while vigorously brushing ice.
We can’t omit what’s possibly the most anticipated stat of all: in February, dogs (10,060 posts) still beat cats (5,729).
What else kept us warm last month? Laughter — 24,720 posts were added to the humor topic. Unsurprisingly, the month that gave us Valentine’s (6,988 posts) let itself be swept off its feet by love, with 103,147 posts. Please note that this is an odd number — isn’t it ironic? (Alanis Morissette: 40 posts.)
What feats we did last month
February was a hectic month behind the scenes, too, with Automatticians — including four new ones — working hard to make WordPress.com the best it can be (if that sounds like fun, join us!).
We redesigned our sharing and reblogging functions for a smoother, more streamlined look. We added two more blogging ebooks to our collection. And we just introduced ecommerce plugins to our WordPress.com Business users, making it possible, for the first time, to turn your sites into complete online storefronts.
Singl, one of ten new themes added in February.
Finally, if you’re looking to update the look of your site, there’s no better time to try out some of our new themes. In the past month we introduced ten themes (four of them free!) to our Theme Showcase. Take a look at Axon, Mayer, Tuned Balloon, Yumblog, Lens, Hexa, Singl, MH Magazine, Circa, and Quadra — you won’t regret it.
Spring Equinox is right around the corner — we can’t wait to see what you accomplish this month!
WordPress.com News 
We who live “up north” may still be blogging about winter and the polar vortex for weeks to come from the looks of it!
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What, dog posts beat cat posts AGAIN?.. How is this possible?! And the note about the Valentine’s Day posts being an odd number — gave me a good laugh, good job noticing!
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Winter is still here in Nashville for now. We got a bit of ice today, so once again the pressure washer is parked next to the heater.
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An excellent list of great reads. Ben, thank you also for featuring one of my images in the post. You have no idea how you’ve made my week. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
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My pleasure — it’s a great pic, and I’m happy I could share it.
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Thanks for sharing! Although I am disappointed to see that there are apparently more dog-people out there blogging than cat-people. 😉
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I think cat-lovers can do better. One blog at a time!
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WP, your numbers always astound me.
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You all rock!
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I loved reading everything about February. Thanks.
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Dear Cat Lovers, let´s make March our month.
Let´s tag all our march posts with cats. And we can even WRITE a post on cats 🙂
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These numbers are extraordinary! I’m not entirely surprised, WordPress.com can’t be beat 🙂
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I always enjoy these monthly posts, with all the numbers, statistics, and general wonderment of the blogging community! Thanks!
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More winter in these parts; then again, more time to take power naps and dream of summer!
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There was frozen ice on my windshield this morning. I may or may not be writing about winter while everyone else is well into experiencing the first glimpses of spring.
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I hope that you will soon have warm sunshine pouring your windshield
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I can’t wait to blog about spring, but that won’t be for another couple months! Ah life in the Midwest. Those are some huge numbers!
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Wow, these numbers make me feel both amazed and tiny; but in the game! I’m learning a lot, posting on schedule (my own personal schedule, thanks for the weekly reminder) but I’m also reading more. Looks like I haven’t even scratched the surface of what WordPress has to offer. Thanks WP!
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That’s exciting. February was awesome. Although I didn’t post as much post like I use to do before, I still recorded the highest number of visitors in February. Most of my articles are now in google’s front page. Thanks to wordpress.
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Great month.
Thanks!
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Awesome! It’s always good to see WordPress doing so well. The more new blogs the better!
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Thank you for the february news and reviews. So much information to digest..
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The numbers are amazing! How do you ever choose Freshly Pressed from so many blog posts????
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We read a lot of blogs! This also explains, though, why so many great posts end up not being Freshly Pressed — there’s only so much our team can read, when more than a million posts are published every day.
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That is an insane amount!
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Domestic Violence is an epidemic everywhere. Sadly, I have not seen any such posts in the Freshly Pressed posts. Many are worthy of being freshly pressed. 1 in every 4 women are abused daily. Respectfully I ask that more attention be given to this growing issue.
Thank you.
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Thank you for the comment. We’ve featured posts on the topic of abuse in the past, and are always looking for more good writing on the topic. Feel free to suggest a post here, or — even better — tweet us a link @freshly_pressed.
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Teela Hart, I posted something about points to look for in finding a partner, headed Warning Alert. Maybe it’s time to move into a safe situation? Thanks Ben, I love to see your statistics!!
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Farming is a lonesome job and you need to know lot of things to become a farmer. I understand that there are not many farm bloggers. Are they enough? If yes, why don’t we see them on freshly pressed.
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We often feature posts from rural and agricultural communities on Freshly Pressed, and I’m sure there are more great farmer-bloggers out there. If you (or anyone else) know of any we should read, let us know (or tweet us a link @freshly_pressed)!
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What a month — thanks for sharing!
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Hoping for those numbers to keep growing. Big dreams for 2014!
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It’s exciting to be part of this blogging family Thanks for all your good work.
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Lol.. Awesome! I love this stats.. Good job Ben.. Looking forward to March
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I finally have a professional looking blog that suits me, thanks to WordPress.
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Such intersting information about February hot list,thanks so much
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That was great fun to read
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Thank you for the information you provide….always helpful! I am dumbfounded by the numbers of blogs and posts!! I’m pretty new to blogging and had no idea how huge it really is! Exciting and daunting at the same time. I’m hoping to get significantly more followers, but I have to admit that the numbers are a bit intimidating; with so many bloggers, it’s hard to imagine being noticed. I will carry on though!
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Always amazes me how big this community is that I now belong to!
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What about soccer? I’m so curious, but there’s no information about it for February numbers listed above.
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We’ll check how soccer’s doing in a future installment, then — there’s a World Cup coming this summer, after all…
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