Monday July 18, 2005

Stats for OpenSolaris - First 4 Weeks

I get several questions a week about what the stats are for OpenSolaris.  Since the Opening  Day was just about one month ago, people are naturally curious.  Heck, I've been curious, too - ever since I read Moneyball - which I've talked about before - I've looked at metrics and statistics differently.  Beyond the obvious reasons for caring - metrics can show adoption and activity (or lack thereof) - I'm also interested in how metrics can influence perception, since perception can trigger word-of-mouth and word-of-mouth conversation can help to create interest and drive adoption. And of course - metrics can directly influence behavior.  I use the "Top Blogs" list and daily hit counts on blogs.sun.com as one example that's rather close to home for Sun bloggers - obviously Top Scorers is another example from video games - there are legions of exampes in the sports world.

I'm also intrigued by the increasing transparency into the site stats for various websites and communities, too - such as the "Viewed 1342 times" and the "5 people call this photo a favorite" on this Harry Potter photo from the Flickr blog.  I'd like to see more and more of this on OpenSolaris.org.

So, here are some initial OpenSolaris stats.  What do they mean?  Given the conversation happening on OpenSolaris.org, not just on the mailing lists but also on the IRC channels, I think it means that a community has rallied around this technology and that folks are conversing and chatting and coding and collaborating to figure out what this community can become, and - to use one of my favorite phrases - how to make sure that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

We've got tons of work to do to grow this ecosystem.  As I was reading David's loud thinking about growing an open source ecosystem tonight (about the Ruby on Rails project - great project, great post), I wondered where OpenSolaris will be in one year's time.  Given the nature of the people I hold in high-regard on Team Solaris - who have just become part of a bigger, more diverse team - I know it will be an exciting ride.

I mailed the opensolaris-discuss mailing list on OpenSolaris.org some stats for the Opening Week titled "OpenSolaris Launch Highlights" several weeks back.  Here are more stats covering the first 4 weeks (which I will cross-post in an email to the opensolaris-discuss mailing list as well.).  Expect to see more stats in the future coming from Patrick Finch (who just started on my team a few weeks ago but immediately turned around and asked for vacation - something about getting married.  I guess that's a reasonable excuse...)  Thanks to Patrick for gathering these numbers for us.

Some OpenSolaris stats - the first 4 weeks (measured since the Jun 14 2005 Opening Day):

OpenSolaris.org page views
Week 1    1,048,077
Week 2      227,411
Week 3      147,137
Week 4      140,316
4 week total: over 1.5 million page views

New non-Sun registered community members on OpenSolaris.org
Week 1     5,423
Week 2       469
Week 3       184
Week 4       150
4 week total:  6,305 non-Sun registrants, PLUS 843 Sun employee registrants

Note - you don't need to register on opensolaris.org to browse or download - it's quite possible that even more people have been exploring and lurking.  I certainly hope so!

New postings to discussion groups
Week 1     1,145
Week 2       674
Week 3       520
Week 4       494
4 week total:  2,815 postings on 543 different topics

OpenSolaris Blogs
Week 1 324 OpenSolaris postings from 150 different bloggers
Week 2 140 OpenSolaris postings from   40 different bloggers
Week 3   99 OpenSolaris postings from   37 different bloggers
Week 4   86 OpenSolaris postings from   29 different bloggers

Question:  Are that many OpenSolaris bloggers really on vacation?  Hmm...

Blogs.sun.com site
Traffic to blogs.sun.com is also up 21% in 4 weeks since Opening Day (vs the 4 preceeding weeks)

Top Referrers to OpenSolaris.org Weeks 1-4
google (all domains)    17.8%
slashdot.org                13.3%
osnews.com                 4.5%
yahoo.com                   4.0%
com.com (cnet)            3.4%

Corrections
There were 2 inaccuracies with the figures published for week 1.  Sorry.  Mea culpa.  Oops. 
- I had said that new non-Sun registrations was 5700 for Week 1.  Really it was 5423.
- I had said that postings on discussion groups for Week1 was 990. Really it was 1145.

Technorati Tag: OpenSolaris

(2005-07-18 02:00:01.0) Permalink