Having a growing readership is very important to me. Knowing that people return to the blog after their first visit tells me the discussion continues to be relevant. The curse of technology is that there are many different metrics that attempt to provide an idea of how well a site is doing: pageviews, unique visitors, and a few others; however deciding how to interpret the numbers is critical to decide on future growth strategies. I’ve settled for a combination of 3 groups of readers and a measurement for each one, obtaining the following graph for the performance of this blog since inception:
Feed Subscribers: these are visitors that will keep coming back for more. Since the number varies day to day, I take the maximum number for each month. This accounts for the fact that not all subscribers read their feeds every day, but when they all do, you get the best snapshot of their size. Since they are reading every article I multiply their number by the total number of posts in a given month. This number is equivalent to each one of them visiting the site once to read each article. They are the most sophisticated group and know how to use tools such as Google Reader, Bloglines and a number of other applications to keep a certain discipline when reading their blogs. If you’re not in this group yet, just Subscribe Now.
Returning Visitors: these are only those visits by visitors who had been to the blog before. They are important to me because the fact that they came back indicates they are likely interested in the content. While nothing can guarantee that they will come back, they probably have made a note about the site. If you come back often to this blog but haven’t done so, you can Bookmark This Site
Other Readers: Those users that have just discovered the blog (first visit), but spent over 10 seconds are my final group. While they may not come back again, the fact that they invested time suggests that there is interest.
The readership of this blog is growing an average of 50% month after month. Our first year anniversary approaches fast and I’m confident we’ve reached momentum to start kicking off some of the other aspects of this project.
The top navigation is now featuring a new section called countries: An interactive map showing a visualization of how often our posts have mentioned each country in the world, darker tones used for those with higher number.
The relevance of this feature goes beyond facilitating the navigation around the site. It helps emphasize the importance of including as many sources as possible within our posts in order to achieve a truly global discussion. I hope that visitors from those countries that have not been mentioned will react to this visualization by submitting a collaboration.
Over the next little while I expect to improve this feature by adding other ways of visualizing the rich set of data that has been discussed throughout the posts.
Thanks to John at backspace.com for the map technology and the useful documentation on how to customize it.
Yesterday I got a call from To√±o, one of many Mexicans that have come to Canada looking for better opportunities. He is young but his voice conveys a very calm attitude, almost zen-like. He has completed engineering studies back home, but the lack of local acreditations have him working as cheap labour. He is in survival mode and as such is likely willing to try almost anything. I worry that if I can’t help, someone will take advantage of his situation.
He is likely going to be one of the first candidates to participate in a blogging workshop that will allow him to explore new ventures by teaching him basic skills. While I know it is unlikely that anybody will make enough money through blogging, specially at an amateur level, the essential lesson is that people coming from remote corners of the world to the big cities should not dismiss their cultural baggage, and instead should take advantage of the wealth of knowledge. Blogging is just the mechanism to make them realize their potential.
A few months ago, I posted think culturati, an early attempt to describe what this blog was all about. The idea has evolved in directions I didn’t expect, but at the core I believe the principle of bringing the conversation of this blog to tangible results continues to be important. At the time I was spending a lot of time working with Wikipedia, so it seemed a good idea to use the army of migrant bloggers to produce information useful for bridging cultures. Today, I’m a little bit less concerned about structuring information and more about helping raise awareness to the issue of migrants shaping Global Culture.
So far this initiative is running out of my own pockets, and I expect to be able to take it much farther on my own, but if you have any ideas on how to organize a blogging workshop in the Toronto area (space, rentals, tools, volunteers, grants), please drop me a line as the first one is likely going to take place within the next couple of months. Even better, if you know anyone who would be good candidate to participate, send them my way.
According to my analytics software, and by virtue of being a finalist for the best new weblogbloggie, it seems there is a very high probability that you are new to this blog. As such, I would like to give you my elevator pitch so you can decide if you should subscribe or just vote for this blog and never come back.
As a result of globalization, I believe there are mostly two kinds of people: those who are joining what I call the idle class, content to adopt a safe rhythm that involves little risk and promises the rewards of mass consumption; and those who will take any risks necessary in order to join the first group. All of them moving at such a fast pace that they can’t realize how valuable their cultural context is and how meaningful their lives could be if they were not hypnotized by global corporations.
I try to lead this debate from my own experiences as an immigrant, and without falling into the usual anti-globalization traps. But this is not a political blog: In the process of researching Global Culture I’ve come across a very diverse group of topics, ranging from soccer to tourism, from BitTorrent to Lonelygirl15, from hackers to outsourcing, from ethnosphere to the noosphere.
I hope you stay. If not, please consider supporting this cause by voting for us.
Thanks to all readers that nominated this blog and made it a finalist among so many great blogs out there. Just having the privilege of sharing the badge of finalist with heavyweights such as Boing Boing, Lifehacker and Slashdot is a reward in its own.
Voting will run until February 2nd, so hurry up and submit you ballot.
Yes, I know it is zeitgeist. But this one deserves the special denomination. Stan Stalnaker and team have just published their 2007 Zeitgeist Ranking, a look at the top cities around the world influencing global culture. While Stan’s ranking is admittedly not scientific, it is a refreshing perspective, possibly a bit on the materialistic side. But that’s ok because he is all about a new generation of consumers. The new Global Culture definitely belongs to those savvy consumers that are not just hunting for bargains but can see the implications of their actions in a fully connected economy.
Reading through the list you may wonder how such a list can be assembled. Who are the people evaluating the various cities and ranking them? Whoever they are, you probably want to confirm they have the authority to judge several cities and be able to compare their various contributions to global culture. Over the next little while we’ll be expanding this site to include the tools that would allow all of us to find those global culture experts. Once we do, I’ll challenge Stan to include in his list of contributors those users that rank high in our list of experts.
When I started posting for Global Culture I did it with a feeling that the task at hand was important, but without a predefined plan. I gave myself these first few months to debate the relevance of the concepts with those interested, to test some dark places and avoid some very common ones. The only thing I knew was that the learning process would be intense and would help me figure out what should come next.
Never in my most colorful dreams I saw such a promising outlook for what this project can be, but it is looking more real every day: with the millions of people throwing themselves into the fast paced world of global everything, everyone seems to be in desperate need for some identity that can be carried through the future to give us the certainty that when we finally get to our destination we haven’t lost our essence. This is the promise of a Global Culture. One that doesn’t belong to anyone and yet everyone cares about.
With an average monthly growth of 53% in the number of visits, a lot of people seem to care about these ideas. At this pace, by the end of the Spring we’ll have in a single week as many visitors as we’ve had since May. But what is even more fascinating is the diversity of our readers:
136 countries represented: U.S., Canada, U.K., India, Australia, Mexico, Germany, Denmark, Turkey, France, China, Singapore & Malaysia contributing most of the traffic
Visitors from over 3350 cities for a truly global flavor. See the animation below: a snapshot of visitors, one week at a time from June to December:
The new year promises plenty of discussion around the concept of Global Culture, but what is most important action will start soon: already you can see I’ve started a poll section (see sidebar) that will mine the wisdom of our global audience for knowledge about what matters most when it comes to being a Global Citizen. This information will be used to provide cool new features that will result in important tools to measure and track our Global Culture.
and team have just published their 
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