Sunday, January 20, 2008

A different sort of wave

Blogging about Obama's speeches in Iowa and New Hampshire generated a lot of traffic, and it was an awful lot of fun to see the spike. But it wasn't something sustainable - most of those people will never visit my blog again. Over the last few days I have experienced a different sort of spike in traffic - one driven by a real science post.

On Thursday, after seeing a story on my BBC Science news feed, I blogged about the discovery of Tahina spectabilis, a new palm from Madagascar. While the traffic grew slowly, it has grown consistently. And it has dominated my blog the last few days. It's great - and very different from the sort of spike that a one-off link can bring. True, there's an order of magnitude less traffic. But it's awfully cool, especially since this is plant science, not politics.

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