News : A new, surprising milestone: 700,000 reasons we say thanks

Even though I work with words, I play with numbers.

I measured the area of the foundation for my new house simply by walking it off, and placing boards where I guessed the proper distance was. I was a bit surprised at how close I came when the contractor marked the spot.

When I wake up, I try to guess what time it is before I look at the clock. Usually I am pretty close. Monday morning, I was off by two minutes.

Later on Monday, I started looking over the stats from the past two weeks at Vinton Today. We measure our readership in page views – how many people have read how many stories. For the past 15 days, we average more than 3,000. (People read the web site much more during the week days than on weekends; do us a favor and do not tell their bosses.)

I started estimating.

I figured we averaged about 2,000 per day for the first couple months, and 3,000 per day since then. I guessed that would put us at around 700,000.

But until Monday, we did not keep track of our total page views on our stats page. We only kept track of the past two weeks. I asked our tech guy if it was possible to figure out how many total hits we have had since we began. Easy, he replied.

The first time I saw the total on Monday, I stared in amazement. Just a shade under 700,000. In fact, at 3:41 p.m. on Monday – nine months and five days after we began Vinton Today, the total page views jumped to 700,007.

That’s a lot. If we keep averaging 3,000 page views per day, in 100 days – March 30, 2011 – we will be at 1 million page views.

If someone had predicted on March as we cautiously began to plan Vinton Today that we would soon be measuring our readership in the hundreds of thousands of stories read, I would have laughed.

But here we are. It’s 9:52 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 20. Page views: 701,182. We have had more than 4,000 again today. There was a time when 4,000 was a record high (now it’s 6,500).

Every story you read -- including this one -- adds to that total. The notices about club meetings, the pages long stories about immigration trials, sporting events or community celebrations they all add up.

Someone once said that if you torture numbers, they will tell you anything.

I will try to keep from waterboarding our numbers, but I can tell you what this 700,000 milestone means to me.

It means that lots of people are reading our stories. It means that lots of people are sending us stories for other people to read. It means that lots of people are telling lots of other people about Vinton Today.

It does not mean, of course, that we have 700,000 readers. In a town of 5,000 that would be impossible. It does not mean we have written 700,000 stories. Again, not feasible.

What it means is that all of the stories on the Vinton Today web site since March 11 have been read a total of 700,000 times.

It means that tomorrow, I know lots of people will be looking at Vinton Today to find out what is happening in Vinton, today. And to all of you who in any way contributed to this milestone, we say: Thanks.