While the 2010 photo contest results churn on a vast array of reel to reel servers that fill the basement, I have time to think of other things. Like the meaning of that line up there. Apparently, right before Christmas, there is a big bump in interest in beers of the month clubs. Having written a post about one back in 2006, it still gets traffic - 95% or more of which is straight cold call Google search results. It makes for about 10% of the traffic today. While it is sort of like an annual spike that replicates the weekly hunt for New York's Sunday beer laws, it does illustrate a little thing I like to call a potential lack of a point.

Like Jay, I got an email asking me to look at the Wikio rankings for North American beer blogs for the month of December. You can look at the results over at Jays place but I wonder of they also illustrate that little potential lack of a point thing. Don't get me wrong, I love the recognition and the underlying interest in my writing that it implies. But the meaning is vague. I have no idea what the Wikio stats reference. I think it has something to links to my site. I happened to be in a meeting today where I think I actually said "we'll have a better sense of that once we see the methodology." I actually get to say stuff like that from time and often not in a craptastic way. The Wikio stuff is like that.

The thing is this: I don't know what tells me more about what I do here at this blog. Is it better to tell a large amount of people a little something about beer of the month clubs or Sunday beer laws? Or is it better to have a smaller group give you specific recognition through intentional linking and balled up by services like Wikio? I have even suffered from un-understanding Google ranks... though the day I was above Guinness in the top 20 results for the one word search "beer" on Google "dot com" (and not just the cheese eating schoolboy of "dot ca") was very cool. I actually told my mother.

You know what? Honestly, the most appealing response is that smallest group of you that submits entries to the photo contest and comments upon them. Is that the correct if flattering fawning answer? Maybe. Maybe I am getting too long in the bloggy tooth but actually making you take pictures of you babies with your beer is about the best thing this blog has come up with so far as a means to measure the human response to internet-based reality. Thanks. Contest winners starting tomorrow if I can cool down the reel to reel tapes soon enough to read the results.