I may be a songwriter, but I am primarily a scientist. And even though I didn’t conceive of FAWM as a data set to be studied (in fact, I had no idea it would grow into what it is now), I must confess that the annual aftermath is one of my favorite parts. So many social and creative trends to evaluate! Rest assured, fellow fawmers, I do not merely see you as a bunch of numbers. However, studying these trends does tell me something about where FAWM is (and where it’s going).
This year, I thought some of you might be interested in the numbers, too. So for the next few weeks, I plan to blog about some of the interesting findings. This week’s focus is on general trends regarding website traffic…
This first chart plots the number of visitors FAWM received each day of February for the past four years. As you can see, it roughly doubles every year! Another interesting trend is a pretty regular hill-and-valley pattern… every seven days or so. Yup, the dips generally occur on the weekends. So I’m guessing that some of you fawmers spend a little too much time surfing FAWM from work. (Either that, or you’re too busy writing songs on the weekends to hang out here.)
Some more interesting numbers: 2008 visitors spent, on average, 14.4 minutes on the site, viewing 11.8 pages each time. 13.6% of fawmers spend more than a half hour per visit, and 90.2% appear to have visited on the previous day. (Addiction?)
This chart shows a breakdown of the most popular web browsers that fawmers are using. Those of you who mostly use Opera (and have thus complained about a few bugs) can see why I haven’t spent more time and money to test with it… this only makes up 1% of the traffic (and is on a slight decline). Not that it’s an excuse, but… uhmm… well, that’s my excuse. Interestingly enough, Safari has nearly doubled it’s FAWM “market share” since last year (fawmers on Macs nearly quadrupled), which means I do need to put more work into being compatible with Apple’s browser quirks. Internet Explorer showed a pretty significant drop in usage, whereas Firefox surged ahead, rendering over half of FAWM’s traffic.
This final figure is a cartogram, or a map distorted to illustrate the volume of FAWM traffic from a country (rather than its landmass). Countries are color-coded by continent. At a quick glance, one can see that North America clearly dominates, which isn’t a total surprise as we’re a USA-based project. Northwestern Europe and Australasia come in second and third. One reason for this is, I suspect, is that these regions have a higher density of people with Internet (particularly high-speed) at work or at home. Being a website, these are the people we’re more likely to see!
Another likely explanation is that the site is in English. The four highest-traffic countries (USA, UK, Canada, and Australia; comprising 92% of all FAWM visitors) are anglophone nations, and other high-traffic regions have a large percent of the population who know English. Now, when we look at the language settings for our visitors’ web browsers, it turns out that the fastest growing demographics speak Swedish (1304% increase), French (1228%), German (237%), and Spanish (140%). So if we decide to go the route of internationalization and localization with FAWM.ORG, these are probably the languages to focus on first. If you’re interested in helping us translate the basic interface and/or FAWM challenge rules into these languages for next year, let me know!
Interesting, that 2005-7 saw a dip in traffic around the 17th to the 20th but 2008 saw a huge spike. They seem to follow the same contour except for that little anomaly. Looks like some people were on FAWM when they should have been out celebrating Valentines too.
Awesome. I think statistics are cool.
So, how many actual Swedes joined us this year?
I’d be interested in stats about length of visit to the website, especially a comparison between logged in visitors (ostensibly, FAWMers) and anonymous visitors. Curious if listeners are spending anywhere near as much time listening as we all spend blathering on the fora
I’m pretty sure that percentage for Swedish gives the wrong impression. There are only 5 active Swedish FAWMers out of 9 total. No WAY should we translate the site into SWEDISH, man! NO FREAKIN’ WAAAY!! (And this diatribe has absolutely NOTHING to do with the fact that I am Danish… *whistles*
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Spinhead - I added a short blurb about average visit length, depth, and recency in the fourth paragraph. I don’t have any explicit data on logged in vs. not-logged-in visitors for this year, though.
Tim - That percentage doesn’t tell the whole story, but recall I said fastest GROWING. It also turns out that Sweden is the 7th highest-traffic country (after the big four, France, and the Netherlands). However, I agree that as a target language it isn’t as high a priority as, say, French and Spanish. (Most all you viking-types speak English, anyway.)
[Scott reclines in his POÄNG chair, takes a bite of knäckebröd, turns up his Ace of Base CD.]
I don’t understand your obsession with Sweden, man.
My favorite parts of the data were the weekend dips in traffic. Nothing says “this mundane work existence doesn’t deserve a musician like me” more than listening to fellow FAWMers during… uh, coffee breaks.
That said, I love my job. I really do.
I’d be down to help with the translations into Spanish
Cool data… I’m also a scientist-type before musician and part of me wants to turn that around… hmmmm… oh well, it’s a happy medium.
THanks for sharing the data!
-Nico
This obsession with Sweden is really unhealthy. Next thing you’ll think that they are capable of beating Denmark in soccer or something like that. What do you mean the statistics prove without a shadow of a doubt that Denmark has consistenly been the inferior team for almost 100 years? Shut up!
Very cool stats. I found it interesting that there is the big surge mid-month that was greater even than the “final push” surge on the 29th. Anyway, nice work.
Also, I can help out with the Spanish translation also next year (as well as any other way I might be of assistance), so keep me in mind.
very cool - love stats too - last year my home town was in the top 10 - looking forward to seeing more - thanks for all your numbers crunching! (and for sharing it)…k
Scott O. Clamp - I actually used the word ‘knäckebröd’ in one of my FAWM songs this year - “How do YOU say Hello?” http://www.fawm.org/songs.php?id=3121
Tim Willie called it just about the perfect children’s song.
I wish I lived in Sweden May-September every year.
Tack sä mycket, merci beaucoup, vielen dank, muchas gracias for the stats.
I love the idea that the mid-month spike was partly down to my writing to Neil Gaiman and getting MJ Hibbett’s “Alan Moore” song plugged to thousands of non-FAWMers. MJH logged in the following day to also see a massive spike of interest in his You Tube account…