Big Leather Couch

Today - a new post:
Part 2 "Saturday In The Kitchen" -
Pork Chops With Mustard Sauce
and Beef & Spinach Patties

Come Take A Seat At My Table

Welcome to 2010 and the 956th post on The Couch. Sometime Q1 2010, I will make my 1,000th post here...

I have not been very prolific the last two plus weeks due to business and the holidays, but am hopeful to get back to my 5-day a week schedule.

Though, it appears that some people have been able to read my posts by my only putting one up every 4-5 days. From the 14th of December until the end of the year I only made 6 posts! Maybe some will cheer and say "THANK THE GODS"...

I was interested in that. I have seen a slight decline in comments over the last quarter of 2009. Was it my writing? Was it just a lack of interest in the bloggosphere?

Many people who once blogged have slowed drastically due to their participation in other social medias with Facebook taking the lead and Twitter also becoming more popular.

I have the Facebook account, but am not an active participant. I wonder if I would spend more time there if it were available on my work account. Though I feel I am more Blog-centric then Facebook.

Facebook has opened up new readers to us bloggers, allowing our posts to be linked to our Facebook accounts and I get comments on my blog posts over on my Facebook account.

I also know there are some who read - either there or here - who never ever comment. I might get an email with a response to something I have written...but nothing in the comment area.

I wondered...did my visits decrease over the last three weeks or were people still coming by to check and see if I had posted?...not everyone has Google Reader, which alerts you to when a new entry is posted.

Also, how does my not posting reflect over the course of this year and in relationship to last year? So we went to the numbers to find out...

In December of 2008 I had 21 entries. For those 21 entries, I had a total of 514 comments - an average of 24.47/day.

This year for the month of December, I had 12 entries. For those 12 entries, I had a total of 213 comments - an average of 17.75/day.

Now, there were a few days this year where I did not respond to your comments. I rarely one-to-one respond as many do, so if I say that I respond to 3 comments per answer, you could add 5 comments per day making my average for this year closer to 22/day.

Not far off.

But, as I said...I am not a blogger who gets as many comments as others. I have a large group of non-commenting readers (some call them lurkers...but I do not like that term.

How did my visits differ from quarter to quarter this past year I wondered...First a look back at 2008 by quarter:

And then 2009

This is interesting to me. The growth from the first half of the year to the second half is almost 50%.

While in 2009 the 3rd quarter was where we had the most visitors...This does make some sense as the month of September brought in over 5,400 visitors - no doubt to read about and view pictures from our wedding and honeymoon.

Also, people did not return as much this year as they did last year...

The next two graphs show the huge decrease in visitors from December 2009 as it relates to the same time last year...a drop of almost 800 visitors...(the January figures are not relevant as the 2008 graph is for all of January 2009)