Stats - a community of lurkers?

[Therin]

I love having a look through the stats on this forum.    But the downturn over the past few months has been really quite noticible with significant drops in new topics, posts and even page views.  Often dropping by more than a third per month. 

But - and I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me - did we really manage to pull 211 people online all at once sometime during the past 7 days or are the stats wrong??    Seriously, given our previous best was the month of inception at 63 that's a major jump... 

Though it doesn't seem to be reflected in the other stats, perhaps people are just lurking? 

As a habitual lurker myself, I often need to be reminded that it's okay to jump in and lurk less.  BookLamp isn't just a project that needs feedback, this beta is a community of sorts, with established shared interests. 

So, people if you really are just lurking - say hello, and lurk less! 

[Aaron Stanton]

Yeah, someone posted a story to Slashdot yesterday, hence the jump in members and online users.  It's a bit preemptive, actually - I'd have preferred the influx after we have a bit more to show to retain people's interest, at least more than we did at launch.  As much as people like the concept of the project - which we needed to know - there's only so much we can offer as a service at this point.  After the first impression, really you're left with dropping by the forums every few days to see how things are going.

There are a number of things in the pipeline that will help build the community, not the least of which is actually being able to offer recommendations and feedback.  Until that's in place, we're really not structured to grow - our traffic will likely continue to come in spurts, and ultimately leave us with a large crowd of people all waiting for the next progressive step.

Personally, I think that's a fine role for everyone to take, at this point - a solid group of people with mutual interests, an enthusiasm for the project, and an expectation of seeing something interesting develop over time.  If people drop by once every few weeks to check up, or subscribe to the RSS feed and monitor our progress... well, all the better.

Until we have more books in the public database, I expect this pattern to continue - grow, then level off - grow, then level off.  Once we have more, though, I expect that to change and our growth to be more constant.

Aaron

[Andy]

I tend to lurk a lot on some sites, but I also do tend to jump in with useless comments that dont help like this one.... hmm maybe I shoulda just lurked!! But as you say its ok to jump in

[Stephen Rollins]

Maybe we're scary.  Or imposing.   

It's good to know BookLamp is starting to get its name out there.  And, not everyone's been lurking around.  Look and see how many people there are with 1 post right now. XD  They bring good ideas and opinions with them, too, which certainly doesn't hurt.

And those who choose to just look, well...  Maybe they'll start talking more once things get going, when BookLamp is something you go to for more than just making a few posts.

[Janice Chan]

I lurked for about five minutes before registering myself.

Frankly speaking, booklamp sounds like a great idea, but the database is...er.. small.
I plan to log in on a weekly basis and watch this web grow.

[Stephen Rollins]

A weekly basis is about what I manage, right now.  I used to get on daily, but was disappointed by only having one or two posts to reply to... XD

I'm kind of looking forward to when things really get going.  Imagine if all the people with accounts checked in (and posted!) at least once per week.  That would be an activity explosion.

[Daniel Bowen]

Hey everyone!

I actually check these forums on (about) a daily basis, so your thoughts are making a difference, and I want you to know that.  Even the "one-timers" usually get a response of some sort.  Unfortunately, most of the one-timers post about the limitations of the demonstration, and I find myself trying to reword the same explanation to many of these.  Keep the interest coming.  We are very glad to have you are who ultimately will benefit from this project.

Dan

[Max Celto]

I check this site out every once in a while to see how it grows but I think one major thing it's missing is a much larger database of book reviews and recommendations. Try it as a post: What's your favourite book? and see what happens. It's a start.