The last 5 days have been far more interesting than I ever would have imagined, most of it related to my post about Microsoft.  I’ll get the big news out of the way first – Scoble picked up on it, and linked to me.  AJ thinks he referred to me as insignificant, but I read it more as an example of how Microsoft looks after the little guy.  While I have no doubt that a large part of the traffic coming my way is from his own readers, he’s also had a surge in traffic from the BBC and surely some of them checked out his other posts ;)

I hope more people stick around than I had after Nick Bradbury linked to me in January, but I don’t consider any of this to be the best news.  As Scoble said today, numbers don’t matter (although I agree, they do tell cool stories).

So here’s a summary of events in the last 5 days, in order.  The most significant of these is last, so please read to the end :P

  • Friday, AJ discovers my blog and outs me to all of my friends.  Traffic spiked quite a bit in comparison to Thursday.
  • Saturday I write about Microsoft.  Saturday evening, Nick links to my post.  This is my second ever link from a notable blogger, and over the weekend I get about 50-75% of the traffic I had the first time he linked to me.
  • Sunday I’m looking through my referrer logs, and notice that Nick’s post has had enough discussion to get it, and by extension a link to me, on techmeme.  It’s at the bottom, but it’s still there :D
  • Yesterday (Monday) doesn’t have any extra links, but two things happen that have significance today.
    • I finally finish the draft of my music posts, giving me the list of CDs I want to order from the US (which I do).
      • As a part of this, I am able to leave comments to the artists I’m buying from – so I give them a link to my blog, saying there will soon be posts up about the purchase.
    • I leave a comment over at Accident Hash which doesn’t seem all that important at the time.  As part of the comment, I mention offhand that I wasn’t able to order one of the CDs mentioned in the show due to the well-documented issues I have with paypal.
  • This morning Scoble links to me.  I’m currently sitting on the following lists:
    • The “top posts from around wordpress” list in each user’s WordPress.com admin page
    • #20 on WordPress.com blog of the day
    • #19 on WordPress.com blog of the day (english blogs only)
    • WP’s stats page is dying from the links to scoble, so I don’t have exact numbers – but I had around 700 views until the stats rolled over at midnight GMT (3hrs after scoble’s post) and in the 9hrs since I’m way over 1200.  My first 1000+ hit post! :D
    • At a rough guess from the post views to total views ratio, I’m getting a roughly 20% clickthrough to my blog front page and a decent size boost in my feed hits as well.  Woot!
  • Later this morning, Hank (one of the hosts of StarCAST, which I am a huge fan of) replies to the post at Accident Hash (scroll to the bottom) as well as one of my posts, requesting that I get in contact to work out how I can order the CD that I couldn’t get.  I’m loving this.
  • Around midday I get a comment on an old entry from Chance, one of my favourites out of the big music order from the night before.  He’s seen the message I left, followed the link and wants to chat.  I was somewhat speechless when I saw it, good thing we had just hit lunch hour :D :D :D

Some people would die for a link from Scoble, and while I’m as excited as any normal blogger would be about it I’m more excited about getting notice from people I’ve grown to admire quite a bit over the last 6 months (starcast) to almost a year (chance).

Podcasting and Podsafe Music is something I’m very passionate about, although I often lack the right words to explain why it’s so good to people who don’t understand.  The growth has been considerable in the last year and a half, but it’s still small enough and friendly enough that fans get a direct response from both podcasters and, more importantly, the artists they play.  Being able to participate in such a fantastic medium while it’s still relatively small means far more to me than a link from a popular blogger, even one as big as Scoble.

And you know, Scoble did just announce he’s leaving Microsoft for a podcasting startup.  Maybe I’m not crazy after all.