The Power of World of O

My website normally goes along averaging about 200 hits a day. So why did I suddenly get 10 times the traffic on Wednesday? Because Mike Eglinski wrote something in his OKansas blog that was reported on World of O and lots of people found it. The story goes back even further, because Mike wrote the article because I'd emailed him about something else that he'd written a few days before, that I had read because of his link from World of O. How many other sports have such a powerful gateway into all aspects of the sport from the very top (read all about Simone's trip to a Robbie Williams concert!) to the very bottom (power is now restored at the BOF office!).

I've had a quick look through some of the other statistics for Wednesday. The average orienteer is running Firefox on Windows XP. Internet Explorer was used for well under 50% of accesses, which I guess indicates that orienteers are quite sophisticated when it comes to the internet<.

It's noticeable that the most-read articles on World of O fall into two main camps: websites of the superstars, and anything written in English. I can struggle through Thierry's site in French, and get through various Swiss sites in German if assisted by Babelfish. I know a few key words in Swedish and Norwegian, and there's always the maps to look at. How long before you'll be able to get a translation from any language to any other language for any website? Stars who post in English are guaranteed a large audience, so thanks to people like Holger Hott Johansen, Oystein Kvaal Osterbro and Pasi Ikonen for letting us in on their secrets.

Today's thought that struck me whilst writing about something else: Everybody in orienteering knows who Simone, Thierry and Jamie are without needing any further information. Looks like you can add Hanny to the list.