The "Tom Effect"
Posted by Tyler Muth on February 13, 2008
Earlier this week I was chatting with Tom Kyte over IM about blog traffic. I was just curious about his stats as I wanted to set some goals for myself. Yes, I know we are in a completely different league, but hey, I guy can dream, right? The conversation paused for a minute, then Tom replied with “tell me what your stats are like tomorrow”. During that pause he wrote this simple post. For those of you familiar with the Digg effect, or the phenomenon formerly know as the Slashdot effect, Tom had a similar impact on my traffic, at least in the context of the Oracle community. My traffic spiked to 3x my best day. I’ve had more hits this week than any previous month!
Why do I care? AdSense baby! Just kidding. My primary goal is motivation. Knowing that people read my posts motivates me to write more. If my average daily hits drop below, say 2, I will probably stop blogging. With this huge surge in traffic, I feel an obligation to post something useful and to do it soon (though this post should not count as useful). I’ll think of something by the weekend…
Thanks Tom, you rock!
February 13, 2008 at 10:22 pm
I don’t know that average hits per day is the best metric. I have you’re site in my RSS reader so I only visit when there’s a new post. Unless downloading your the RSS feed is part of your hit count I’d suggest a hits per post measurement.
-Mark
February 14, 2008 at 3:18 am
Hi Tyler,
I found your site from Tom’s post and have now added your site to my feed reader.
February 14, 2008 at 5:16 am
Hello,
I read your blog! Come on with more helpful posts
February 14, 2008 at 5:06 pm
Tell Tom that I would have no problem with it if he generates the “Tom Kyte Effect” for my blog too
If you now so motivated, I hope to see more postings from you in the future!
Patrick
February 15, 2008 at 12:09 am
Patrick,
Looks like about 8 people per day clicked on the link to your blog from mine. You have a lot of great posts out there so I hope people added you to their RSS reader.
I’ll post something by Sunday. I have a running list of about 15 topics I want to write about, but they are all pretty hard and would require days of setup and research, so I’ll try and come up with something short, but cool.
Tyler
February 15, 2008 at 2:10 am
I reached this blog through Tom’s posting. The reason I added it to my list of “blogs to follow” is that I truely liked what I was reading. It was practical, and it showed me things I had personally been wondering about.
Finding good blogs these days is quite hard, as there are a plethora (not of the woolen variety, mind you) of them.
February 15, 2008 at 2:48 pm
Like Alastair, I found your site from Tom’s post and have now added your site to my feed reader. I’m always looking for new, useful discussions about Apex.
This sounds like the “Six Degrees from Kevin Bacon” effect, where every Oracle programmer who blogs can somehow be connected back to Tom Kyte! LOL
Since I’ve asked a couple questions on his site, I’m thinking I’m only one degree of freedom away?
February 18, 2008 at 7:04 am
Hi Tyler,
You are doing a great job. keep it going.
We all know what Tom is to Oracle community, but your contribution is also immense.
Time and again you’ve participated in asktom to provide your inputs, and now with this blog you can extend your role further.
February 18, 2008 at 11:13 am
Well, that traffic’ll be gone in no time. 5 days since the last post?
February 19, 2008 at 1:27 pm
Yes, please continue to blog! We appreciate it!
February 21, 2008 at 11:37 pm
Thanks for the support everyone! Basil I’ll err on the optimistic side and assume your comment, which I initially interpreted as someone impatient, is just your way of motivating me
Tyler