up vote 17 down vote favorite

I can see some other websites linking to this, but is this >243k view count in just 3 days really correct...?

243k views according to front page

Viewed 243,229 times times according to side bar

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8  
Given which question you're showing, how it was linked on several places including a tweet from Jeff... yes, that looks about right. – Grace Note♦ Jan 13 '11 at 13:54
Okay, then we need more questions like that. Maybe I should change this question into "More ideas for questions like this?", to keep Super User alive! – Arjan Jan 13 '11 at 13:56
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While... amusing, to put it lightly... that question does have one real good thing going for it as far as being a popular and highly viewed question - it's actually a question. So bravo enough for that. – Grace Note♦ Jan 13 '11 at 13:59
Hah I remember seeing that question just when it had ~200 views... my how it has grown. Makes my case about having external links to crazy questions even stronger. :) – Jeff Mercado Jan 13 '11 at 14:04
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I still think it's slightly ridiculous - only 2 of the 50 top votes questions on SO have had more than that amount of views, and most were only accumulated over two years: stackoverflow.com/questions?sort=votes – Yi Jiang Jan 13 '11 at 14:06
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@Grace, more fun facts: it was actually an off topic question on Stack Overflow first! Bravo for migration too! – Arjan Jan 13 '11 at 14:07
Wow, viewed 222,686 times only 15 minutes later. It's just starting! Love to see some statistics later on! Hopefully the team can add some well-paying advertising in time! – Arjan Jan 13 '11 at 14:09
@Arjan: Your question might just add significantly to the view count of that one. – JP19 Jan 13 '11 at 14:22
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@JP19, this very question has been viewed 43 times now. No, that does not account for over 1,000 new views in 30 minutes. – Arjan Jan 13 '11 at 14:24
Hmm, I think I should ask the question "What are the letters A and B used for" over at English Language and Usage, where the most popular question ever hasn't even reached 5,000 views. Brb. – RegDwight Jan 13 '11 at 14:38
Or ask Jeff to tweet about a random other question, @Reg :-) – Arjan Jan 13 '11 at 14:50
Yes @Arjan, they are correct, especially Reddit caused a very large peak in the traffic yesterday – Ivo Flipse♦ Jan 13 '11 at 16:24
Ah, @Ivo, any chance you know of some figures, and know if you can publish those? – Arjan Jan 13 '11 at 16:29
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it was also tweeted by @Smashingmag, who has over 300k followers. – Jin Jan 14 '11 at 3:01
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Rapid answers of similar ramble kicked the whole question to CW at 15. @ivo – random♦ Jan 14 '11 at 3:16
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migrated from meta.stackoverflow.com Jan 16 '11 at 18:57

3 Answers

up vote 13 down vote accepted

So to show the curious among you what an impact a viral post being shared on social media can have (points @Arjan):

alt text

The page views more than doubled that day and we even got an additional 200 new users (on top of our normal growth)

Who should we thank for this network effect? Well the next short list speaks for itself: alt text

Reddit is the clear winner, followed with a still nice amounts by Hacker News, Facebook, Twitter, Stumbleupon and Fark.com. Quite unexpected, even the Pirate Bay sent us a decent amount of traffic that day!

So there you have it: the Social Network effect! Therefore, feel free to make good use of the new Twitter streams, who knows perhaps you question will get picked up too!

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Teh 3 Googles combined are about 45K – JP19 Jan 21 '11 at 13:13
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Could be, but note that these referrals are for the whole site not just that one question – Ivo Flipse♦ Jan 21 '11 at 13:36
up vote 14 down vote

Well, let's have some fun collecting the stats for this question ourselves.

Numbers are rounded, because they'll change rapidly anyway. Be sure to add to this list if you have any other link stats.

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up vote 8 down vote

If you're asking why -- the question is popular because it is an obvious sign of the passing times :)

"What's a floppy disk anyway?"

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I once helped someone who got their floppy stuck in their zip. We got it out, and the zip was fine, but I'm told the floppy was never the same again... – Adam Davis Jan 14 '11 at 1:34

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