28February
The headlines
size accounts 12391611 +218711 +1.80% size accounts_active_1 577158 -518 -0.09% size accounts_active_30 1858620 4281 +0.23% size accounts_active_7 1179653 -2138 -0.18% userinfo total 12375349 +218986 +1.80% userinfo updated 7941738 +97211 +1.24% userinfo updated_last1 223291 -3859 -1.70% userinfo updated_last30 1084336 -1446 -0.13% userinfo updated_last7 637955 -3831 -0.60%
1.8% growth overall, and a second slight uptick in the active:30 figure. Maybe it's not falling at 1.8% per year; if it were, we would expect a small fall this month.
For those reading this without seeing a previous entry, I treat userinfo:updated as a proxy for all human users.
Sex
gender F 3394858 +57367 1.72% gender M 1649367 +32007 1.98% gender U 2030536 +52511 2.65%
Total gender declared: 7,074,761 (+141885, 2.04%) (57% of Accounts, 89% of Updated - the latter is up 1%.) The fifth month where males are signing up faster than females, we still reckon there won't be as few as two women for every man until the end of the year. By then, it's possible that Unstated gender might be pushing the top, making the sex statistics of little value.
Age
Here's a list of the ages with at least 100,000 people:
age 15 194356 620 age 16 365333 238 age 17 497234 7951 age 18 560917 13358 age 19 568294 16318 age 20 530542 15426 age 21 477391 16333 age 22 392164 17135 age 23 314087 12501 age 24 259814 10864 age 25 207515 9738 age 26 191189 7604 age 27 150464 10856 age 28 109472 5610
Modal age remains 19. Quartiles come at 18.5 (+0.1), 21.1 (+0.1), 25.2 (+0.2); the first two are consistent with the usual aging process, which will tick up by 0.1 for ten months in twelve. The noticeable skewing towards the older end continues. Total declaring an age: 5737305 (+197155, 3.56%) (81% of Sex, 72% of Updated). Both figures have moved up by one percent.
Top 20 Countries
US 3315346 33032 1.00% RU 439991 17822 4.05% CA 280800 3534 1.26% UK 241409 4048 1.68% AU 114290 1796 1.57% UA 51589 2567 4.98% PH 44450 888 2.00% DE 41485 974 2.35% SG 40931 1676 4.09% FI 33153 692 2.09% JP 27530 527 1.91% NL 23111 422 1.83% IL 17248 410 2.38% BY 16870 820 4.86% NZ 16576 295 1.78% BR 15683 375 2.39% ES 15631 380 2.43% FR 14968 388 2.59% SE 11115 254 2.29% IE 10560 186 1.76%
224 other countries: 253,865
Total countries declared: 5026601 (+76964, 1.56%) (88% of those declaring an Age (-1%), 71% of Sex, 63% of Active). Belarus moves past New Zealand for position 14. The usual suspects show the fast growth - Ukraine 4.98%, Belarus 4.86%, Singapore and Russia 4.1%. Slightly slower than average growth from New Zealand, Ireland, UK, and Australia; much slower from Canada and the US. India is 151 users behind Ireland, only slightly fewer than last month.
Signups
For our purposes, the February signup month runs from 30 January to 26 February.
The trend is to have signups about 800 lower per day this month than last; six days saw more joiners than last year, but there was no kick-up towards the end of the month.
Total signups: 2002 - 25,891 2003 - 43,834 2004 - 291,771 2005 - 325,342 2006 - 241,868 2007 - 219,237
Syndicated feeds
Top 10 blogthings 33352 +34 postsecret 25043 +533 dictionary_wotd 16796 +4 officialgaiman 15721 +96 astronomy_picture 11107 +139 penny_arcade 9124 +122 sinfest 8722 +67 vg_cats 8283 -17 overheard_nyc 8095 +130 savage_love 7997 +53 Readership of feed ranked: 50 1370 (-29) 100 658 (-17) 200 309 (-4) 500 123 (-3) 1000 56 (-2)
The Zipf distribution allows us to approximate n = (1/k^s)*a
where n = number of readers
k = rank
s = exponent (experimentally, 1.14)
a = scalar multiple (experimentally, 126,200)
This gives a slightly different shape to last month's distribution, where s=1.10 and a=110,000.
We might extend the table:
2500 16 (-4) 5000 7 (-2) 10000 3 (-1) 25000 1 (-1) 50000 1
We're reasonably confident that between 50,000 and 70,000 feeds have at least one reader.
These are the statistics. Conclusions, as ever, are yours.
Also this month
What' Sup, Doc? - the perils of doing business with the Russian mafia.
Unsafe browsing recommended, if you're Six Apart's support, firewalls are an inconvenience.
An eye-poppingly ugly re-design to celebrate the naffness of the ROPRA awards.
danah boyd on why digital gifts just don't work.
Bobbie Johnson wrote in A Demi Grauniad,
Why ask for people's opinions if you aren't interested in what they say? Because people are lazy enough to assume that protest and participation are the same thing. It's an easy sop to armchair revolutionaries and usually scores a few brownie points too.
The real scandal is the failure of all the diggers, suggesters, stormers, petitioners and voters to hold the authorities to account. That's democracy 2.0 in action: oh yes, we can hear you. But we're just not listening.
Falling for its own mythology, Six Apart has signed up with Peanut Labs, a company that specialises in doing market research for Gen Y (a group defined by the company as those born roughly from 1980-95).
(Sidebar: Generation X, as originally defined, was those who came of age during the 1980s; roughly, those born during the 1960s. There's no letter for the forgotten generation, those of us born in the 70s, who will have to pick up the shocking mess left by the boomers and the hippykids. We digress...)
Diamond Geezer on his inability to comment on any Six Apart site, because of a broken sign-up procedure. (comments) We're slightly surprised that DG didn't slag off the Urban Hell's Best British Blog contest, but that's probably because he's in with a shout of winning.
