this is the year in this is sippey

I’ve never done one of these posts and I’m not sure why I’m starting now, but here’s a recap of the year on this is sippey.typepad.com.

First, these were the top five posts based on traffic.

1. Project Management Lingo, where I swiped content from a mailing list, put it in list form and got a link from Kottke.
2. Holy mother of god they’re nuts, where I swiped a video from Vimeo, took five minutes to add a map to it and got links from Waxy and Kottke.
3. We’re here to compete, where I defended Six Apart against charges of playing dirty in the marketplace, and got a link from Matt.
4. Restaurants should do the math for you, where I took five minutes to write up a simple idea I’ve had for years, and got a link from Waxy.
5. Kanye West Album Generator, where I took five minutes to sketch up an idea I stole from Anil (it’s true! I’m a thief!), and I don’t think he even linked to me.

Note to self: if optimizing for traffic, then write more lists and/or link bait. On the flip side, here are five of my favorite posts that weren’t big traffic magnets.

1. Casual carpool, serendipity and radovan kardzic is a telling of a trip across the Bay Bridge that made my week.
2. Wanted, friends for the js-909, which still has me thinking about how small a unit of media can be. If Kuler can turn the simple color swatch into the point of reference for a community, why not drum patterns?
3. Notes on the death of Hal Riney mourned the loss of the golden-throated ad man, and posited that there’s no way in hell those Saturn ads would work today.
4. Upgrading your television is too hard, in which I posed a simple question — how the hell do I switch to HD? — and had a ton of interesting people with great ideas chimed in. I still need to write the follow up post.
5. Next up, our own executive chef is just a time lapse video of Mena Trott cutting David Recordon’s hair.

As if the difference between the top five in traffic and my fave five weren’t stark enough, I’ll make it abundantly clear: I blog for me, and I don’t really blog about anything in particular…other than what I think is interesting enough to blog about. If I were optimizing for pageviews, there’d be more lists, more link bait and possibly more posts about the relationship between attention and authority. Or authority and followers. Or the attention span of idiot land. Or something.

OK, then! Here’s a fancy data visualization of my posting activity by month. This’ll drive the page views:

Jan +++++++++++++++++++
Feb +++++++++++++
Mar +++++++++++++++
Apr +++++++
May ++++++++
Jun ++++++++++++
Jul ++++++++++
Aug ++++++++++++
Sep +++++++++++++++++++
Oct +++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Nov +++++++++++++++++
Dec +++++++++++++++++++++ (est.)

And since the world is made up of more than ordered lists, here’s an unordered list for you. (I know, breathe deep.)

• I probably redesigned the site about eighteen times this year. Not only do I have a short attention span, but I also like mucking with the new design capabilities that we’re bringing to TypePad.
• For a while I was auto-posting links from Delicious, but I realized that I hate it when other bloggers do that on their site / feed, so I stopped doing that.
• Blogging is part of a mix of how an individual can participate online. My (Movable Type-powered) action stream at sippey.com is a view into all the sharing, favoriting, posting, saving and tweeting activity I’m doing. But to play to a recent meme, it’s on my blog where I have home field advantage.
• I’m more heterogenous in how I’m blogging lately — some posts by email, some posts from the TypePad web UI, some posts via the TextMate blogging bundle, some posts from the TypePad iPhone app. Fred Wilson’s latest post about how his Blackberry is his own personal fountain pen has me inspired to do more off the cuff posting by email, but it’ll probably take me all year to get half as good at it as he is.
• Goal for 2009: 365 days, 365 posts. There may be some days with one post, and some days with more, but I’d love to get back into that rhythm.

And scene.

Comments

[Larissa Gaston]

I loved your "Casual carpool, serendipity and radovan kardzic" post - that was a memorable one. I don't blog for page views, visits or link bait either, and although I read plenty of blogs that obviously make that their goal, my favorites tend to be those that don't. Happy blogging in 2009.:)

[Michael Sippey]

Thanks, Larissa! Here's to happy blogging for you, too, in 2009. Cheers!