So how did IKN do in the awards that went on for a week’s worth of voting and got boring after four days and got people irritated while I bugged you to vote every day? The answer is remarkably well and I’m thankful to you all.
First the basics; IKN got 1043 votes and came third in the category “Best Latino Caribbean or South American Blog”. First place went to Venezuelan financial blog ‘Dolar Paralelo’ and second place went to English language Cuban blog ‘Generation Y’. Hearty congratulations to both.
However, as you know (or should do by now) your wonky Otto is a nerd for numbers, stats and such, so here’s a bit of extra context. They tend to pump the result we managed to get quite shamelessly, but as it’s Sunday morning there are less people around to annoy, let’s do it.
- The 1043 votes mean that IKN is not only third place in 2008, but third place all time. Between the first Weblog Award in 2003 and 2007 the best vote total obtained by any other blog was 995 (last year’s winner).
- We were punching above our weight. This year’s winner ‘Dolar Paralelo’ has over 38,000 people on its RSS feed and according to Alexa the website (not blog, but website) number 13,000 in the whole wide world. Second place Generation Y is already a multiple award-winning blog and a major part of the desdecuba network that got 14 million hits in December (according to a post seen on the very same Generation Y blog).
- Interestingly, the fourth place blog ‘Luz de Luma’ has a full 23,000 readers on its feed. All this shows just how well we did all thanks to you out there, as IKN still has under 1,000 people on its RSS feed. It could be because we get more people coming directly to the site than the others mentioned, but that’s just a guess.
- IKN has only been going for nine months! It’s a pretty cool achievement to have reached the finals of the biggest blog awards competition in such a short space of time, let alone finish on the podium.
Finally, all the above is wonky, obsessive numberstuff and should be taken lightly, but there is a point to this post (that’s cribbed and adapted from a mail I wrote recently). I’d like to say to say that I know 3rd place in some online poll isn’t going to change the course of human history, but the way you guys turned out is one of those silly things that shows human generosity and general niceness. I hope with these few words I can reciprocate some of the fuzzy warm feeling you’ve handed over to me in January. A sincere ‘thank you’ for voting the site. i mean it; you guys rock.