The visitor statistics to this blog has been going steadily upwards since it was first launched in spring 2009 (see graph above), and last month we actually had more than 5000 hits. Although bloggers built-in visitor statistics does not separate automated searches from web-engines from individuals that are really interested in our stuff, and although it does not track "unique" visitors, I think these numbers reflect an ongoing and positive trend, and increasing awareness of our research and the blog. It is probably a safe educated guess that several hundred visitors per month read our blog and find it interesting and worthwhile to read.
Hopefully, this increase will continue in the near future, as it often takes several years to build up a new blog and "brand it". Hopefully, the blog will also help us to attract students, postdocs and other outside collaborators and also spread more efficiently information about our ongoing studies and publications. Sofar, we have mainly used it to announce lab-meetings, but we are increasingly using it also as a vehicle to inform about recent meetings that we have participated in, as Maren did recently when she was at "Blodbadet" in Stockholm, as also Fabrice did after he went to a hybridization workshop in Scotland, and as I also I did myself when I recently visited the ASAB Winter Meeting with Machteld.
Blogs and social media do certainly not replace traditional means of scientific communication, such as peer-reviewed publications in international journals. But they are certainly an important complement, and I am more and more convinced that they can have a positive impact and "spill-over effects" on such vital things as citation rates of papers.
I would therefore encourage you all, once again, to post interesting things, short or long, on this blog, along these lines, including interesting talks you have been to, or interesting articles you have stumbled upon. Together, we might make this blog an excellent outlet for the dissemination of research, both our own and others.
