30April
The headlines
size accounts 12831257 214195 1.70% size accounts_active_1 462231 -50432 -9.84% size accounts_active_30 1815554 1701 0.09% size accounts_active_7 1146842 808 0.07% userinfo total 12816920 215622 1.71% userinfo updated 8135102 95165 1.18% userinfo updated_last1 173549 -30834 -15.09% userinfo updated_last30 1054108 308 0.03% userinfo updated_last7 622264 5305 0.86%
Though slightly slower than recently, it's hard to argue that the trend of 1.8% growth per month isn't continuing. The active:30 figure is virtually unchanged, following a 2.4% drop the previous month.
For those reading this without seeing a previous entry, we treat userinfo:updated as a proxy for all human users.
Sex
gender F 3528430 67569 1.95% gender M 1722030 36117 2.14% gender U 2088310 19527 0.94%
Total gender declared: 7338770 (+123213, 1.71%) (57% of Accounts, 90% of Updated.) Males are still signing up faster than females, the F/M ratio stands at 2.049 (-0.004).
Age
Here's a list of the ages with at least 100,000 people:
age 15 193493 -44 -0.02% age 16 359478 -2914 -0.80% age 17 510139 6403 1.27% age 18 586428 12083 2.10% age 19 601389 15988 2.73% age 20 563955 16476 3.01% age 21 510595 16277 3.29% age 22 427842 17222 4.19% age 23 341391 13001 3.96% age 24 282603 11138 4.10% age 25 228248 9991 4.58% age 26 203308 5348 2.70% age 27 174192 12207 7.54% age 28 121810 5669 4.88% age 29 101928 (new)
Modal age remains 19. Quartiles come at 18.6 (+0.1), 21.3 (+0.1), 25.5 (+0.2), showing further evidence that Livejournal is gaining older users faster than younger ones. Total declaring an age: 6133993 (+193089, 3.25%) (83% of Sex, 75% of Updated, both up 1%.)
Top 20 Countries
US 3357679 16734 0.50% RU 464520 9648 2.12% CA 285463 1755 0.62% UK 246653 2214 0.91% AU 117036 1101 0.95% UA 54878 1370 2.56% PH 45725 508 1.12% SG 43608 1029 2.42% DE 42817 582 1.38% FI 34165 447 1.33% JP 28311 331 1.18% NL 23598 221 0.95% BY 18115 442 2.50% IL 17827 246 1.40% NZ 17018 192 1.14% BR 16159 191 1.20% ES 16120 190 1.19% FR 15486 221 1.45% SE 11445 142 1.26% IE 10821 94 0.88%
224 other countries: 261134
Total countries declared: 5128578 (+50643, 1.00%) (84% of those declaring an Age (-1%), 70% of Sex, 63% of Active).
As expected, no changes in the order of the top 20. Compared with recent months, growth has been far more evenly distributed - Ukraine, Belarus, Singapore and Russia continue to slow their growth, a trend we noted last month. These countries have typically had 3-4% growth per month, but it's barely 2-2.5% this time. Apart from these five gainers, all the rest of the top 20 grows more slowly than Livejournal as a whole, with the Anglophone countries and the Netherlands particularly sluggish. The gaps beneath the 20: India is 159 behind (+24), Italy 463 adrift (-78).
Signups
For our purposes, the April signup month runs from 30 March to 28 April.
The trend this month is actually to have more signups this year than last, with 18 of the 30 days this year exceeded the corresponding day last.
Total signups: 2002 - 32226 2003 - 56669 2004 - 319542 2005 - 330574 2006 - 214882 2007 - 222748
Syndicated feeds
Top 10 Blogthings 32901 -193 Postsecret 26395 628 Word of the Day 16878 61 Officialgaiman 15950 131 Astronomy Picture 11308 92 XKCD 9443 1143 Penny Arcade 9319 100 Sinfest 8917 96 VG Cats 8294 16 Overheardnyc 8267 89
XKCD climbs two places to sixth.
Readership of feed ranked: 50 1463 (+55) 100 694 (+16) 200 318 (+1) 500 134 (+4) 1000 60 (+1)
The Zipf distribution allows us to approximate n = (1/k^s)*a
where n = number of readers
k = rank
s = exponent (experimentally, 1.15)
a = scalar multiple (experimentally, 135,200)
This gives an almost identical shape to last month's distribution, where s=1.15 and a=133,700.
We might extend the table:
2500 17 (+1) 5000 8 (+1) 10000 3 (nc) 25000 1 (nc) 50000 1 (+1)
We're reasonably confident that around 50,000 feeds have at least one reader.
These are the statistics. Conclusions, as ever, are yours.
Commentary this month
Abraham Hassan, who still hasn't been shown the door for his atrocious customer service (see last month), claimed, Pointing out cool or interesting communities on LiveJournal is "advertising" now? I know and understand a whole number of complaints regarding advertising on LiveJournal, but this is the first time I've ever heard anyone complain that the spotlight is advertising. Sure, it's a promotion and I guess if you squint it's advertising, but I've never once heard a single paid user complain that they're "forced" to see the spotlight on the home page. (And I read every single complaint we get.) Lies from start to finish. Six Apart takes money for pimping communities on the front page. This is advertising, just as book companies paying for the front tables in bookshops is advertising. We really cannot be bothered giving the rest of Mr. Hassan's statement the fisking it so richly deserves, for some of us have lives. Others work for get paid by Six Apart.
Mr. Hassan's April Fish, incidentally, continued Livejournal's track record of being Completely Unfunny. As and when he does get fired, he can always write scripts for ITV Comedy. What, they won't hire him? He's too rubbish? Blimey!
Three years after they were available to the one-third of users in the FARCE, and three months after they were put behind an +1-800 number that rejects international calls (and those from Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico), Livejournal introduced phone numbers for some of its international customers. They appeared in Canada (3rd most popular country by users), the UK (4th), Australia (5th), and Japan (11th). There's absolutely no love for Russia (2nd) or Ukraine (6th), nor for the SMS-obsessed Philippines and Singapore (7th and 8th).
An SMS-to-LJ gateway in south Asia (possibly also Germany and Finland) would be a very quick win. Indeed, there is no technical reason whatsoever for restricting the official SMS-to-LJ gateway to the FARCE. The only reason for this geographical limitation seems to be that it's a money earner for Six Apart, and heaven forfend that they might do something that would cost money, even in the short-term.
The unofficial SMS-to-LJ service continues to work, as does the post-by-phone number (+44 (0)20 7100 1117).
Of course, it's two steps forward and one step back - the cultural imperialism of the damned Yankees continued by failing to localise the introductory spiel. Users were confused when the # button was referred to as the £ key, when everyone knows that a pound looks like this: £ (£), and even more confused when the dialling code for London was unilaterally changed from 020 to 0203.
The official spokesblog was compromised on 20 April, when an entry entitled, line is foar more photobucket? We has a Photobucket appeared. The remaining content was not written in anything that might pass for standard English, and we suspect hackers at play.
