BASED ON A FIVE-YEAR analysis and more than 200 comments on TwentyMajor's blog, my main blog will retire itself within another five years. That's what the downward slope from Statcounter suggests in the above screenshot. I opened my Typepad blog in mid-2003 and watched it ramp up in readership until 2007. It's been downhill ever since, smacked downwards by microblogs, YouTube, and other ambient streams. But that makes my blog a perfect set piece for the web analytics module I teach in Tipperary Institute. During 12 weeks in the classroom, we'll explore how to plumb the ambient streams that can help reverse my downslide. And we'll test drive several analytics packages that may help finger exact strategies. As a bonus, I'll pay students for consultancy services that actually work to reverse the downward slope shown by my blog's statistics.
Techcrunch -- "The Dawning of Ambient Streams" 20 Dec 09.
Twenty Major -- "On Irish Blogging Being 'over'" and some lively commentary on 5 Jan 10.
