[Wikipedia-l] Re: Slashdot

[Fred Bauder]

on 9/10/03 6:44 AM, Jimmy Wales at jwales at bomis.com wrote:

> Tim Starling wrote:
>> According to Alexa we now get as much traffic as Slashdot.
> 
> I believe that you are mistaken.  I see their traffic rank as 845, and
> ours as 2,140.
> 
> I used to have access to the MediaMetrix numbers, which were
> considered at the time industry standard.  (Might still be, but since
> the dot-com crash, I don't fantasize about selling Bomis for billions
> anymore, so I don't worry about such things!)
> 
> Anyhow, my research at the time suggested that for every *doubling* of
> traffic, you generally *halve* your rank.  That's a rough rule of
> thumb, but it held remarkably well.
> 
> That is, a site ranked 500 has twice the traffic of a site ranked
> 1000.  And a site ranked 845 has twice the traffic of a site ranked
> 1690.  If we are 2,140 and they are 845, then they have more than
> twice the traffic that we have.
> 
> (Actually I see now that the rank that they show is some kind of
> moving average, and that according to this url, our traffic just
> recently touched theirs.  I'm skeptical, but we do rock.)

Slashdot has a good rate of growth over the last two years but has recently
leveled off a bit. After all their appeal really is to the computer literate
and wannabes, a limited audience. Our rate of growth is better and we
potentially serve a mass audience in all languages. Unless there is some
limiting factor we will soon equal and pass them. I would say within a year
at most.

Fred