Image by WordPress.com by the Numbers: The March Hot List
Another month is in the books! The WordPress.com community made March a month to remember with an avalanche of great achievements. Here’s a look at some of the highlights.
Talk about Spring thaw: you were quite the active bunch of bloggers in March. How impressive were your accomplishments last month? We dug out our solar-powered calculators and crunched some numbers. The results blew us away.
Stats to make your jaw drop
The past month was the second-wordiest of all time on WordPress.com: you wrote no fewer than 10,987,367,622 words. These made for 44,529,669 posts. Many were first posts by the more than 1.6 million new bloggers who joined us (it’s great to have you!).
We were honored to feature 260 exceptional pieces as editors’ picks on Freshly Pressed, from a history of selfies to a discussion of the death of a popular TV character — written by the actress who portrays her.
As you’d imagine, thoughtful posts inspire a great deal of interaction. This past month the community left 56,669,182 comments and clicked the Like button 8,105,067 times.
This image by From My Horizon was an entry in last month’s popular photo challenge, “Reflections.”
Looking good, across devices
Readers view an increasing number of your posts on smartphones and tablets. This explains why so many of you tested your sites’ appearance using the Customizer’s recently introduced device previews (1,596,670 previews generated!).
You made your sites look more visually striking with 85,712 new Image Widgets, 29,605 Instagram Widgets, and 7,018 Flickr Widgets. You can now also use top-quality footage from Getty Images in your posts, and you did: you’ve embedded more than 80,000 images from Getty in less than a month.
The stuff blogs are made of
One of our favorite monthly rituals is digging into your post tags to see which topics occupied the WordPress.com hive mind.
It comes as no surprise that March Madness (4,146 tagged posts) and college basketball (9,989) were high on the list. They still lagged behind baseball, though (69,366 posts), with the buildup toward Opening Day at the end of the month.
Spring (24,054 posts) was clearly on your minds, and with it spring break (3,363), flowers (10,134), and cleaning (2,118).
Another entry from the “Reflections” photo challenge, this one by bmyshot.
Parenting inspired 12,610 tagged posts, and was almost perfectly counterbalanced when you added beer (8,113) to wine (4,373). You can draw your own conclusions.
Recent Oscar winners Cate Blanchett (923 posts) and Matthew McConaughey (1,394) were popular topics of discussion — and that’s counting only those who bothered to check those tricky-to-spell last names.
Finally, sorry to disappoint all you ailurophiles (that’s cat lovers, of course): your beloved felines yet again got trounced by their canine frenemies. Dogs: 10,589; cats: 6,401. Is that a big, defiant “meow” we hear? Maybe you’ll do better in April.
Looking good under the hood
It was another exciting month for the people working on WordPress.com. We were joined by five new Automatticians in March, spread across the globe from California to Malta. Perhaps you’d like to join us, too?
Hemingway Rewritten, one of nine striking themes added in March.
We revamped our post editor last month, and introduced new emoticons that are already loved by millions. We also added twelve new domains that you can use to further personalize your site.
We also welcomed an impressive fresh batch of nine new themes. If you haven’t already, take a look at free themes Tonal and Hemingway Rewritten, and premium offerings Sixteen Nine, The Writer, Broadsheet, Wedding, Gridiculous Pro, Mina Olen, and Sweet Life.
What will the new month bring? We’re sure you’ll blow our minds once again; you always do.
- April 2, 2014
- Automattic, Community, Stats, WordPress.com
WordPress.com News 
So, looking at the numbers…
As a parent who may perhaps rely on beer and wine ocassionally, and a dog person who doesn’t really ‘get’ cats, and a comitted blogger who did their best to contribute to the nearly 11 billion words pressed…
I feel nicely represented here. Nice one. Time to crack on with April!
LikeLike
This is one of my fav WP posts of the month. Love reading the stats and seeing what everyone was up to. LOVE this!
LikeLike
Can’t wait ’til I make it on the Hot List!
LikeLike
I notice that there are many, many spiritually-oriented blogs here, but they very seldom get any notice. While it may be true that some people use their blogs to promote their own beliefs, not everyone does, and some of these bloggers can actually write very well. So I’m wondering…why is it that, say, Buddhist blogs, Sufi blogs such as my own Sufism-oriented blog or more existentially, philosophically or transpersonally-focused blogs don’t seem to get any notice? I live in the Bible Belt, and I can see the difficulties inherent in this situation, but as I said: some of these people can actually write, and do so for the sake of inspiration and the promotion of religious universalism, to say nothing of giving comfort and enlightenment. Surely these topics are at least as worthy of notice as beer-drinking, sex and football, not to mention politics? IS WordPress the “thinking person’s blog?”
LikeLike
While this particular post is meant to be on the lighter side, we feature great posts on topics like religion, philosophy, and many others over at Freshly Pressed, our editor’s picks showcase. We also frequently round up great blogs on focused topics on this blog, and your suggestions are noted — thanks for the feedback!
LikeLiked by 1 person
The cats are biding their time before they pounce …
LikeLike
is there any similar for just all swedish users? would be great to have a flashback for other then english words. I just love stats!
LikeLike
It would indeed be neat to compare stats across languages. For now, though, we only present these figures on English tags.
LikeLike
Ok, too bad.
LikeLike
Simply brilliant! These stats are amazing. Love this understanding and meeting new folks every single day on WP!
LikeLike
Absolutely love the reflection picture!
LikeLiked by 1 person
One more LIKE button clicked on.
LikeLike
Note to self: Drink more with my kindergartner around. Write about it.
The WP numbers are awesome, Ben. Grateful to be a part of it. Thank you guys for all that you do.
LikeLike
Glad I could add to the numbers especially as a “1st time” blogger since it’s been years since I have done blogs and not as consistent as what I’m doing now.
LikeLike
Hmm, seems to me the bird lovers have to start posting more.
LikeLike
I’m very happy to be one of these new 1.6 million wordpress bloggers. Great stats and an interesting read, thank you 🙂
LikeLike
I didn’t realize there were that many people on here! That’s amazing and nice to know how much it is growing.
LikeLike
Hi Ben, the link to ‘Freshly Pressed’ (around the 3rd paragraph) has a broken link (missing a http:// at the start)
LikeLike
Thanks for the tip — all fixed!
LikeLike
also the three links in this paragraph lead to 404s:
“You made your sites look more visually striking with 85,712 new Image Widgets, 29,605 Instagram Widgets, and 7,018 Flickr Widgets”
LikeLike
Thanks for the close read — all fixed. I think the “http://” part of those link references must have taken a left turn at Albuquerque.
LikeLike
Fun post – and cool to read those stats. And I so need to find a few of those cleaning posts – of the 2,118!! –
🙂
LikeLike