On an Oooom-Pa-Pa to Start the Day: Attempting to Do Baha'u'llah's Bidding

Forgive me if I start out the day by tooting my horn. Baha'i Views achieved another milestone yesterday, with 314 distinct Visits (not including my own), by breaking 300 the most ever so far for this little blog. The high water mark for Page Views was approached yesterday, but not exceeded. The highest figure for that is 614, achieved three weeks ago, whereas the total yesterday was 594, the second highest ever. Multiply each of these figures by 365 and you would get about 115,000 visits a year and 217,000 page views, projected totals if there were no further growth (or decline).

I am reminded that even these figures, which I obtain through Sitemeter, are not necessarily accurate, as RSS numbers are not included with the service. In the paper "Blogging and the Bahá’í Faith: Suggestions and Possible Approaches" by the Bahá’í Internet Agency (2006), the following is noted:

One of the weaknesses of a blog reporting tool is that it does not measure the true exposure of your site. The reason for this is because a blogs are often accessed via RSS (Really Simple Syndication). Once the user has subscribed to your blog, their RSS reader will download new posting automatically. The user may not visit your blog site directly ever again. So your most dedicated audience may not be represented in your web logs.

Everything a computer does is recordable in one form or another. If you control the server, it should be possible to see who is downloading your postings via RSS. In the future, blogging systems will probably record all forms of access.

http://www.bcca.org/bia/

Baha'i Views is the 24th result if doing a keyword search for the word "Baha'i" today using Google. There is no higher ranked personal Baha'i blog currently, if you use this measure.

Happily, there are a lot more Baha'i blogs out there -- what, 650 or so on BahaiNine? -- each reflecting the message of Baha'u'llah in one way or another. There is strength reflected in these numbers, but the visibility the Faith has in world today is teenie tiny compared to what it will have in the future, if each of us do our part. Imagine if every Baha'i were to blog! To strive to do Baha'u'llah's bidding is such a joy and is the whole point of this post and this blog -gw

{Photo: "mein Horn durchbrennen," uploaded on September 21, 2007 by dave_apple on flickr, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic}