Each year WordPress.com, the company that hosts this blog, prepares summary statistics on the blog’s activity. The most basic number is how many people viewed the posts each day/month/year. The table below is a summary of blog views from 2011 through 2014.

Summary of Blog Views by Month and Year

Summary of Blog Views by Month and Year

The blog began in July 201. We have written 177 blogs and those blogs have been viewed at total of 11,507 times. I have written the majority of the blogs but a huge number of guest bloggers have been involved too. This year there were 18 guest bloggers. Listed in no particular order, they were: Rebecca Galloway, Amanda Scarbrough, Tony DiNuzzo, Linda Rounds, Meredith Masel, Tom Knight, Adele Herzfeld, Rachel Little, Bronia Michejenko, Karen Brown, Mark Scott, Shontel Minor, Barbara Orantes, Leah Jacobs, Danielle Rohr, Krista Dunn, Paula Crawford and Leslie Hargrove. I am very grateful for each person’s time and intellectual contribution.

Referring to the table above, the most views ever happened in May 2013 and 2013 was the year with the highest overall, total views. But if you look at the monthly totals you can see viewership has grown since 2011 and then held fairly steady until dropping off in the Fall 2014. I’ve had the feeling that the project overall has been winding down somewhat and maybe the blog is reflecting this trend. Overall, the blog has reached quite a few people.

People can add comments to each post. There were not many posted comments in 2014. Most were from me (42), second highest was from a non-UTMB aging professional (12), with a few posts from Tony DiNuzzo and Mary Wainwright. There were more comments, but not vastly more, posted on the Facebook page but Facebook does not provide summaries of that information. Overall, response to the blogs has been more readership than discussion.

Summaries exist for all years except 2011. You can look at various statistics from each year by clicking on the links below:

We also did a panel discussion on aging in March 2014. This was held at the UTMB island campus in Second Life® and the presenters were: Tony DiNuzzo, Rebecca Galloway, Bronia Michejenko and Rodger Marion. The video recording of this discussion, Hometown Science Presentation (3/15/2014) – Aging and Wellness: Ways Science Can Help, is below.

 

While we still use Facebook, mainly for its ability to insert updates onto the main ETGEC web page, we were disappointed in using Facebook as a social communication medium. People just were not going there to dialog. Using LinkedIn was suggested as people thought it might be more professionally acceptable. Many people like to reserve Facebook for personal communications. So we have been using a LinkedIn group with every blog posted there as a new discussion. Initially 15 people joined the group and four liked the first post. We have posted 26 blogs to LinkedIn. Activity has been quiet since that first posting. So, neither Facebook or LinkedIn have served the ETGEC/C as a communications tool.

The Weekly Discussion on Aging will resume next week but on a new day. It will be held on Fridays 12:00 p.m. to 12:45 p.m. UTMB is hosting Science Fridays at 1 p.m. Perhaps these two activities will dovetail nicely. See Discussion and SL tabs above for details.

Join us on Friday, January 9 at noon in Second Life. In order t0 stay consistent with the policy of using the blog as the basis for discussion, blogs will be published on Wednesdays, beginning on January 14.

Rodger Marion prepared this annual summary.