The Power of Community

A friend of mine help me set up Google Analytics with this blog, so I could see how much traffic was coming to the blog. I said sure. More out of curiosity than anything. Well, my friend was amazed (as I was). Yesterday there were over 1100 visits to this blog. This blog has only been up for less than a week.

Here are some interesting observations from the information Analytics reports.

• 54% of the people visiting did not click on a link to get to the blog. They either had a bookmark, typed in the address or copied the address and pasted it in.
  
• Blogs and News Sites that led people here by clicking on a link were (in order): theiborebellion.blogspot.com, technorati.com, digg.com, media.alticorblogs.com, adatudes.opportunityzone.com
  
• There were a surprising number of webmail links (people got an email with the address and clicked on the link in the email).
  
• Less than 10% found the site via a search engine, like Google.
  
• The majority of visitors were from Michigan, from the following cities (in order): Detroit, Flint, Southfield, Grand Rapids, Bay City, Allendale, Kalamazoo, Waterford, Rochester, New Haven, Ada, Birmingham, Macomb, Dearborn Heights, Saginaw, Battle Creek, Troy, Walled Lake, Pontiac, Hanover, Shelby, Lansing, Muskegon, Royal Oak, Ypsilanti, Westland, Charlotte, Warren, Flat Rock, Clinton, Monroe, East Lansing, Grandville, Ann Arbor, Traverse City, Fowlerville, Franklin, Bloomfield Hills, Flushing, Jackson, Romeo, Mount Morris, Rockford, Midland, Grawn, Rockwood, Zeeland, Scottville, Fraser, Livonia, Canton, Vernon
  
• It was really fun to see all the cities in Michigan I've heard about on the CDs
  

I think this shows that Content and Commerce are not as big a deal as Community. The Team community has a lot of power. With only word of mouth, they can direct large traffic flow on the internet. I had heard about the affect of community and the value of it on the internet way back in 1999, but to actually see it is amazing.

Lesson Learned: Quixtar, it appears you may be quickly loosing an extremely valuable community. The more hostile you become, the more people will look for Team's leadership.