Something strange is going on and I’m not entirely sure how to get to the bottom of it. I’m suspicious, curious and oddly trepidacious, which is unfortunate because, under the circumstances, I should be feeling thankful and flattered.
That may sounds deliciously mysterious, or perhaps rather dully melodramatic, but I shall explain. Basically, in recent weeks the number of followers of my blog has increased dramatically – from somewhere in the 300s – which took a couple of years and two Freshly Pressed posts to accumulate – to well over five hundred, with a serious head of steam up towards 600. Over the last four days I have received regular e-mails from WordPress informing me that new subscribers have signed up to my blog, yet not a single one of them has liked any of my posts nor made any comments. Indeed, I’m convinced that none of them has even looked at any of my posts, judging by the activity data on the Dashboard, because there has been no corresponding increase in the number of views. In fact, quite the contrary – the last few days have marked a steady decline in viewing numbers – no doubt in the absence of any recent posts.
After my post Back to the Front was Freshly Pressed in February, I received a significant spike in views, likes and subscribers as might be expected, and for which I am still very thankful. Inevitably, as my post moved off the top and steadily further down the page, thus receiving less exposure, that flood of views dwindled to a trickle and, ultimately, down to a daily average that hovers somewhere between 40 and 100. Once a few weeks had passed the number of people liking or subscribing – outside of my posting anything new – also dwindled to the very occasional – maybe one a day at best. This is precisely what I would expect without the exposure offered by the Freshly Pressed page because it fits the pattern I’ve identified over the last few years.
At the end of that burst of activity and attention, I had roughly three hundred plus subscribers. This was a very pleasing number and, it seemed, a group made up of people who had actually read my work or looked at my photographs, judging by the distribution of likes and comments. Then, about three weeks ago, I noticed that the number of subscribers had risen to c. 450 odd. This came as a real surprise because I had hardly received any e-mail notifications of new subscribers in that period, or notice of any activity for that matter. I began to wonder – is this because WordPress no longer informs me when people without a Gravatar sign up? Had I received a torrent of subscribers getting notification via e-mail, but without any presence on WordPress? Previously I had been notified when people without a Gravatar signed up, so, perhaps something had changed. Either way, however, the numbers seemed outrageously inflated for such a short period of time. Where were these subscribers coming from? What was going on?
Then, four days ago, my inbox was suddenly full of WordPress notifications again. My first thought was, oh joy, perhaps I’ve been Freshly Pressed, for outside of a fresh post which receives an uncanny amount of attention, there are never so many notifications. This, however, was not the case, and, as stated above, none of the new subscribers liked or commented on anything I’d posted. It occurred to me that I should Google Tragicocomedia and see if my blog was somewhere being promoted or highlighted, yet apart from a bunch of references to various of my posts, the only other site that seemed to be associated was one called Bloglovin’ of which I’d not previously heard, but which seemed to provide links to roughly eight million blogs on exactly the same subjects – fashion and vanity. This was depressing enough, but also entirely unenlightening, because when I searched through all the categories I couldn’t find my blog anywhere prominent that might explain the attention it had recently received. It also seemed so far removed from the subject matter of the top blog list – which are, quite literally, almost all about fashion – that I can’t imagine anyone visiting that site would take an interest in Tragicocomedia.
I was left feeling very deeply suspicious. Was this an example of the sort of bullshit that goes on at Twitter, wherein people buy whole swathes of followers in some desperate attempt to promote their personal brand of self-obsession or some utterly undesirable product? I’d certainly not instigated any such activity. Was this some slightly back-handed flattery, in that my blog had received enough hits to warrant people wanting to follow it for the sake of jumping on the bandwagon, in the hope of drawing attention to themselves? The idea seems both utterly preposterous and also deeply annoying as I had liked to think that WordPress existed outside of that insincere and pointless follow me if I follow you universe. Surely people would only follow blogs because they actually want to read them, right?
Maybe I’m being horribly naïve and old-fashioned about all this. Either way, I certainly have no desire to alienate or upset new subscribers who genuinely are interested in my writing and photography. But if you’re only here to get a leg-up of some kind, then I’d recommend you go back to Twitter, because I’m not in this for the numbers and frankly am not going to follow you back just because you followed me. I’m only interested in following blogs I’ll actually read, which I really ought to do a whole lot more of! Indeed, I just paused a moment in writing this to work out why on earth I never receive notifications of posts from blogs I’ve chosen to follow. Strangely, the default setting is to send no notifications whatsoever. Having now made reparations for this, it seems my inbox is going to be a lot fuller after all and the time I allocate to reading is going to need a serious extension.
Anyways, to finish up, I’m still baffled about all this and would be happy to receive clarification, should anyone know the cause. Either way, what I would like to say is a great big thanks to all my subscribers, especially those who have been following me for some time now. I shall try in future to be more inter-active, as it were, and to pay proper attention to what is going on in your worlds as well. All the best!
Tragicocomedia 
Interesting, definitely. I’ve had many people sign up to follow me, and, as you say, they are never to be seen again. I’m not quite sure why they would do this, but I’m not in this for the numbers either. I rarely look at my stats.
I don’t have an answer for you, but I had a similar experience this month, although on a much smaller scale. I posted after being inactive for a few weeks and soon got a notice from WordPress that I had received a larger than usual number of likes in a short period of time. Since it was only four, I took time to review each of the blogs. Three of them seemed to be people who do some kind of website marketing. I was disappointed to see that they probably weren’t interested in stopping colds and allergies after all. Then later I entered a new topic in my reader to investigate something totally unrelated. I was surprised to see the same three gravatars liking the most recent post. I don’t know how they get around so quickly, but they are obviously not reading the posts they liked. I understand some people “like” a post so they can find and read it later when time permits.
When I follow a post, I elect not to get e-mail notifications, but just let them come in with other blogs I follow. If a blogger strays from topics I am interested in, I gently unfollow them so I can keep up with reading.all new posts daily.
I’m curious about another question. In the black bar at the top there is a little graph showing readers in the past two hours. This afternoon mine said eleven. That seemed high to me because my last post was on April 3 and is way down the list. Also, I average only 30 or 40 views per day in stats. So does that mean that eleven people per hour whiz past my headline, or what is the point–any clues?
Thanks very much for your response. I’m not much help, unfortunately, when it comes to the statistics, and they may display differently according to your settings, I imagine the bar at the top of my screen shows views for the past 48 hours, and when I hover over it a number and an arrow displays, which I assume to be the total activity in the period for which I’ve been logged in that day. I’m sure the answer is there somewhere, but I guess I never was fussed enough about it to chase it up. I guess what I’m most curious about is where the new subscribers are linking to my site as the information about which search engines the views came through doesn’t go into sufficient detail to reveal this, and anyway, I’m not convinced it’s even related to the viewing activity. Oh well! I guess it might all become clear at some point soon enough…
I can’t explain it but I also know that this happens. I for some reason also don’t get some of the blogs that I follow in my reader, either. Nevertheless, I enjoy your blog! 🙂
Thanks very much! Check your “blogs I subscribe to” section in the dashboard and you should be able to manage notifications about the blogs you subscribe to… Good luck : )
Thanks!
I too have noticed that the overall ‘business’ with WordPress has changed. For a while now I haven’t received any links anymore to blogposts I have subscribed to, even though I changed the settings on WordPress. So, I can only read them here when I log in under “Blogs I follow”. Truly sad is that I lost track of some really good blogs the names of which I can’t recall. Other than that, I think the number or follower count is simply wrong.
Oh, and I do enjoy your posts and find them very refreshing, intriguing and entertaining.
Thank you!
Firstly, thanks very much! Yes, something is definitely going on – most of the new subscribers I’ve been picking up in recent days seem very suspicious to me – the majority have no offerings of their own, and some have one crappy post that is merely a link to a website, under which there seem to be a suspicious number of what are clearly bot-generated responses which also post links to other sites. Quite frankly, I’m not interested in these types of subscribers, though of course, it’s not easy to be certain which are legit and which are not. Again, however, I’ve now shot above 600, without any corresponding increase in hits and no further likes. It seems clear to me these people haven’t even looked at my blog, but some auto-subscribe service has sent them my way. Dear oh dear.
As to your not receiving notice of your subscriptions, I suggested in another reply below to go into the dashboard and manually change the settings for each blog you subscribe to in the “blogs I follow” section (I think that’s what it’s called!) – There you can change the notification settings. Hope that helps, and apologies if you already know this and I’m just stating the obvious! Cheers again, all the best : )
Thank you for your helpful tips. Yes, I tried this already, but to no avail. Oh well. I will just to have to read the posts here on the WordPress site. At least today I was able to add an image – yesterday I was not.
Like Twitter and FB, the most influencial aspect of user-generated content is TL;DR. In case you’re not aware of what that means, it’s Too Long;Didn’t Read.
Unfortunately, anyone who suffers from that failure to take the time will pick up a nice picture, meme joke or a few key words in Reader and hit the like button without opening your blog at all. If they really liked it, they might even hit that ‘Follow’ button to the right. Personally, I waver between, where I like/follow a well-written, but long winded story about (i.e.) ‘Little Kim’ or appreciate a grouping of mere photographs. The truth is that I think very little about following a blog other than to have the ability to see their new posts in ‘Blogs I Follow’.
What most entices me, though, are comments. Anyone who takes the time to send me thoughts are golden to me and I answer each one which asks a question of me and is not just a supportive tweet. However, I do check out each responder’s blog and, if I like it, I will follow.
As a moderator on another website with nearly 300K members, I’ve grown used to dealing with the cybermasses and it is my experience that, regardless of where in the world they live, there is a general willingness to please and support others who genuinely try communicate those things that are important to them, no matter what the subject matter.
I suppose all I am trying to convey in this message is that we should not question the positive responses people are willing to display. Nearly a decade of moderating that website I mentioned, you should be glad to not have to deal with people incensed over actions made to their posts which have transgressed the Terms and Conditions of that site. How often I’ve been compared to a Nazi Stormtrooper, I don’t know anymore, but it has had some regularity.
(and now I’m going to follow you, but not expect you to follow me if you find my blog uninteresting)
🙂
Thanks very much for the lengthy reply. I do to some degree understand the various motivations behind people following things – though not as intricately as you, and thankyou for your insights, but what has baffled me primarily has been the sudden explosion of follows and what the source of this might have been. I guess I have reached some sort of critical mass and my blog is garnering attention. I totally get it that people won’t want to read what I write – I’m all too conscious of the fact that I write often very lengthy pieces and know how lazy I myself am with reading sometimes. I’m happy for people to just look at the photos, which I know many do – and I have joked about this elsewhere in posts. Ultimately I’m not really producing this for my audience, but following my own agenda. Not to say that I’m not interested in what interests the audience, only that I’d rather just do what interests me and hope people like it. If they don’t, it’s not a problem. For a very long while there I had 1 follower and received hardly any likes at all, but just kept posting. I’m flattered by the attention, that is for sure, and don’t resent it – I just want to know what has caused such a sudden spike in followers, without, as the above discussion indicated, much of an increase in views or likes. People, of course, don’t have to like anything! I suppose I find it odd to follow without liking, but fair enough, it’s up to them. I have definitely noticed that some of the new subscribers are just promotional sites and that does make me wonder, but again, no harm done so I’m not too worried about it. Anyway, thanks very much for the follow and taking the time to comment, I appreciate it. I’m sure you’re not a Nazi stormtrooper!
all the best,
B