Wednesday 8 April 2009

Is there anybody out there?



At the last Hendon Residents Forum, I asked the council to provide visitor statistics for the Leader Listens website. According to the answer given, the site had a total of 98,230 page views between October 2008 and February 2009 - an average of 19,646 views per month.


That is a pretty impressive figure! It is also incorrect.

At last night’s council meeting, the leader stated that his site actually receives “in excess of 1,000 page views per month” - a mere 5% of the previously quoted figure. Not quite so impressive.

At the Residents Forum, we were told that for the five months above, the site had been visited a total of 23,664 times - an average of 4,732 times a month. Also impressive and also incorrect.

The figure given last night was just 912 visits over a six month period - an average of 150 visits per month (3.2% of the figure previously claimed).

Now I have no idea why the previous figures were so inflated, but the statistics demonstrate one point very clearly - nobody is reading the leader’s blog.

Rog T recently observed on his blog that the leader rarely posts any new articles - and now we know why. There is no point in the leader wasting his time, especially when most of his readers are councillors, council officers and comrade bloggers.

Hazel Blears MP has apparently praised Barnet for its use of social media. I wonder if the Rt. Hon. Secretary of State has been given the stats?

150 visitors a month is frankly pathetic and proves that the whole exercise has been a complete waste of public money.

If people really want to know what is going on in Barnet, they only need to bookmark this site, and it doesn’t cost taxpayers a penny!

1 comment:

Rog T said...

David,

You've obviously not read my latest post. I've uncovered a few new Mike Freer blogs. Maybe his avid readers are just suffering burn out !