Sunday, October 26, 2008
Traffic on DataSphere shows nosiness is a good thing
This is, ostensibly, a column about the first anniversary of the launch of the DataSphere.
That's The Roanoke Times' and roanoke.com's online data library -- Matt Chittum, proprietor -- which hit the Web on Oct. 24, 2007.
But it winds up really being about you, gentle reader.
I set out to write about the data about the DataSphere. I'm still a neophyte in the data world, but I got hooked fast. I'm a data junkie, undeniably. Feeding my data frenzy is the handy availability of data about my data.
That is, the data on how many people look at the databases and graphics I offer in the DataSphere. I look at it in weekly and monthly chunks all the time, but I figured a look back at the whole year to see what the traffic was like would be a good way to mark the anniversary.
What the data ultimately shows, though, is not so much what my work for the year amounted to as the tastes of you, the consumer.
Our idea in launching the DataSphere was to take data we've collected for news stories for years and offer it all to you, unfiltered, so you could find the information you want without depending on journalists' views of which of it is most important. The result is a collection of searchable databases and interactive maps and graphics on topics ranging from crime to sports, education to the outdoors.
It was an acquired taste at first, but you acquired it, and interest in data online grew not so much steadily as in big, periodic leaps.
By August, monthly traffic was triple what it was the first month we were online.
Of all the hits we piled up on DataSphere items during the year, a third of them came just since Aug. 1. So, this data thing seems to be catching on.
But what is it that you're looking at?
The data's quite clear on what you like most: crime.
Nearly 40 percent of all DataSphere traffic was on pages that display crime data in one form or another -- the crime maps for Roanoke, Salem, Radford and Roanoke and Montgomery counties, and more recently, the database of 1,100 violations of laws governing the sale of alcohol in Virginia.
That last one was a big surprise. I posted it in mid-August, and it's already the third-most popular item in the history of the DataSphere.
Your second-favorite data category was government and politics, which accounted for 12 percent of the traffic. We offered data on local campaign finance, Roanoke City Council expenses, gifts given to state lawmakers and congressional earmarks, plus an interactive map of 20 years of presidential election results for Virginia, and "word clouds" of the text of this year's presidential and vice-presidential debates. You showed steady interest in all of it.
After that, there's a clump of interest areas, each accounting for 6 percent to 10 percent of DataSphere, with sports leading the way thanks to interest largely in college football, especially of the Hokie variety. Sports is followed by animal sightings, weather, real estate, the outdoors, education, the environment and health.
What does all this say?
To me, it says something I like hearing about the community where I've lived my whole life and the readers I seek to serve here at The Roanoke Times.
It says that you care about the health and safety of your neighbors and neighborhood; that you want to know the affairs of your elected officials -- and those trying get elected; that you care to know the quality of the schools your children attend; and that you balance such weighty concerns with other passions such as sports, hunting and fishing. That's the image of a healthy, well-balanced community.
Above all, this data says you are engaged and concerned.
Some might call you nosy, but that's just a nasty word for curious, and curiosity is a glorious thing. It's the engine of intelligence and discovery.
Don't ever be ashamed of being nosy. It's the nosy people in the world who keep the rest of us honest.
