One Year, One Month and Seventeen Days...

That's how old The Mikocheni Report is, and I missed the blogiversary... again. What can I say, it's turning into a tradition.

I was going to wait until after Christmas to write up the blog's performance as promised. But. I have this pending assignment and I would rather have my toenails torn out than face the draft report again, know what I mean? So here's me procrastinating.

First up, some numbers. I have the use of three blog trackers, one in-built and two free. None of their numbers match on a day-to-day basis but they do give me some relatively similar information on performance. Yes, you read right. Three trackers. I am anally retentive that way. Here are some highlights:

- Visits: Tracker One says 11,771 hits and 7,441 visits* since January 2010. Tracker Two says 7,402 page loads and 4,210 unique visitors since July 2010. In-built tracker says 11,352 page loads since May 2010. Having very little ambition, I think those are great statistics!**

- Popular posts: Tracker One says that the TEDxDAR post on Modesta Mahiga is the most popular with 145 hits since January 2010. Tracker Two is not equipped to deal with this data. In-built Tracker tells me that Elections 2010, Social Media got 146 hits since May 2010.

- Where y'all from? Turns out that most of my readers have Tanzanian ISPs. Tracker One says that 39.9% of you are resident in Tanzania, followed by 23.6% in the U.S. and 6.38% in the UK. Tracker Two is constrained to 500 entries but it reflects a similar pattern: 51.6% from Tanzania, 20% from the U.S. and 5% from the U.K. In-built tracker doesn't give percentages but the top three countries are: Tanzania, followed by the U.S. followed by the U.K. in similar proportions.

- And for a little fun: Tracker One tells me that 68% of y'all using Windows, 23% using Mac and 33% y'all using Firefox followed by 30% on Internet Explorer and 19% on Safari. Tracker Two ain't equipped to deal with this kinda thing. The In-built tracker says that 74% of you use Windows, 20% use Mac with 34% on Explorer and 31% on Firefox and an impressive 16% on Chrome.

Okay, conclusions. First: there are more readers of the blog than I would ever have expected, to be honest. Second: the graphics aren't as horrible on a Mac, for ya'll laboring with a decrepit Windows machine. Just saying. Third: y'all love you some Modesta Mahiga :) Fourth: readers outside of Tanzania are concentrated in prime areas of the Tanzanian diaspora: the US (East Coast) and the UK. Also, big up to the significant minorities: readers in Canada, Kenya, Scandinavia, Norway, Switzerland and India. Hello, friends.

Major big-up: the reader(s) in Russia who have inboxed me some of the most fascinating Tanzanian-Russian political analysis it has ever been my pleasure to read. My goodness, you guys. You rock. But why y'all been so quiet lately?

Which brings me to the most important thing: you.

I "outed" my blog because a cantankerous friend of mine wouldn't stop nagging and nagging and nagging me about doing better. So I did. And then I met blog friends. And artist friends. And I found perfect steak. I got contacts, content, professional opportunities and intense conversation. I got laughter, and a wee bit of stress, but mostly I got some incredible and unexpected support and a platform from which to speak my sarcastic mind.

If I were to go into the debt of gratitude that I owe my readers, my friends, my blogfriends and all of you who have challenged me and given me content and made it all more than worthwhile... well, this would have to turn into a Hallmark movie. So I'll keep it simple.

Thank you, so very much. I hope you keep reading. I hope you keep commenting. I wish you the very best for the holiday season, and the coming year.

*The difference between hits and visits is that hits can come from anything: webcrawlers, wetware, misguided souls and various internet ghouls. Visits, however, occur when someone deliberately clicks on your blog/link and then spends some of their time reading your content. So visits are the human subset of hits. Also: every tracker has it's own jargon. Go figure.

** I was planning to put up pictures of the blog trackers and then realized that I couldn't be bothered. It's December in Dar es Salaam. Enough said :)