Absurd Singularity

This past weekend we took Devon to his first Easter egg hunt at Hamilton Park. It was an interesting day for all of us as Erin and I discovered that we should not tell him beforehand what we would be doing later. Cause if it sounds exciting enough to him, he has no problems skipping his afternoon nap time in anticipation. And it's not like we upsold him on it or anything. I just casually mentioned that we'd go looking for eggs later.

So I've had my Flickr account for about a year now and for the last month or so I've averaged about 50-75 views per day (if that). I don't put a lot of stuff up since my 365 Project photos trickle in at one per day and most of the time I'll post photos directly to either my blog or Devon's site.

For the prior 2 weeks, the New York International Auto Show had been in town and so I had taken a bunch of pictures when we visited one day. Those photos I uploaded as a set to Flickr where they sat around for about 4 or 5 days before apparently suddenly hitting the limelight. Late two evenings ago, I started noticing a rather significant uptick in my Flickr stats. By the time I woke up the next morning, my current day view count was already up in the 30k range. I kept an eye on it throughout the day and was amused when every refresh of the stats page showed an increase in the hundreds.

I took the above screenshot when the Flickr day ended. As you can see, I supposedly amassed 68,945 total views across my Flickr photos, photostream, and sets. The prior day (which isn't shown here) my total was a bit over 600. Prior to this huge surge, my total view count since I created my account a year ago was 9,884. So in one day my total view count increased almost 7X.

Here you can see that the photos that were on the receiving end of all this attention were my shots from the auto show. And apparently, Bumblebee is a HUGE draw for people. Or is he? And why are my photos getting all this attention now when they had been living in relative anonymity for the past week?

Delving into the referrers chart reveals some answers I believe. Apparently, a good chunk of my shots were picked up in Yahoo's "Community & News" module for their Auto Show section. And guess which photo shows up in the #1 spot. Right, Bumblebee. So it appears that a good # of visitors came in from Yahoo Autos through the Bumblebee photo and then ping ponged around the rest of my car show set and even my photostream.

Some questions remain though. Like why is Bumblebee in that first spot? He's not the first photo in my set. And why are all my photos from that set showing up in that module? I can't be the only one who took photos at the auto show, tagged them and released them under Creative Commons. And what the heck is this "Unknown Source" referrer that's apparently piping in a bit over 20% of views. Plus, are these views actually from visitors coming through Community & News? Or are views being counted if someone just visits an auto-related page on Yahoo that calls up the Community & News module? I tend to think that they are actual visitors since I assume Yahoo's overall traffic is even heavier. And if that is the case, wow.

Anyway, not that I'm complaining or anything (except for the fact that this sudden spike of traffic is going to ruin that topmost "Daily aggregate views" chart for me for the next month. ;-p
Plus the interest seems to be dying down as traffic today is nowhere near yesterday's levels. Still high compared to my previous numbers though.

The day I took these photos was notable because it was the first time Devon actually decided it was ok to wear my sunglasses for longer than 2 seconds. Actually it was the first time he let me seat it on his face without balking.

And he really likes 'em. Previously, whenever he would see them, he'd tell me to put them on. Now, he takes them from me and puts them on himself. I think it's time to get him his own pair of sunglasses. =p