WordPress.com News and Numbers: The August 2013 Hot List

Recently, Michelle offered a snapshot of WordPress.com activity in July. The verdict? You’re all busy bees and publish a lot. We’re proud of our community’s accomplishments this past month, too — August certainly sizzled. Here’s a glimpse at what’s been in the works at WordPress.com, through news and numbers.

You’re in the spotlight.

A number of you are TEDTalk alums, and we were glad to see The Economist‘s digital editor and WordPress.com blogger Tom Standage give a TedxOxbridge talk in England on lessons from ancient social media, from his forthcoming book Writing on the Wall: Social Media — The First 2,000 Years, which you can read about on his blog.

Another WordPresser, Ann Morgan, had a stellar August. In 2012, she read her way around the globe’s 196 independent countries, chronicling her literary adventure on her blog, A Year of Reading the World. 

A feature on BBC Culture led to lots of exposure of her site around the globe, including press in Denmark, Sweden, Serbia, Macedonia, Estonia, Bulgaria, Hungary, and more.

Ann penned an August recap on her blog, and also has a whole new project, If Women Ruled, in which she considers an alternate world — one where women are in charge from the beginning of time. Be sure to follow along!

You’re going viral.

Notable editors’ picks in our Discover showcase resonate with the community and beyond — and some are picked up by major outlets and shared far and wide. Tressie McMillan Cottom‘s think piece, “When Your (Brown) Body is a (White) Wonderland,” and her commentary on brown bodies as amusement parks, caught the attention of the Atlantic, NPR, nymag.com, and many, many more.

Sean Lee’s open letter on Syria to Western narcissists was another post to watch, picked up by Andrew Sullivan at The Dish. Sean’s letter was republished on The Huffington Post, too.

Illustrator Mica Angela Hendricks’ “Collaborating with a 4-year-old,” showcasing her and her daughter’s unique series of quirky, whimsical sketches, has been immensely popular — it’s made the rounds on Reddit, Laughing Squid, Colossal, BuzzFeed, and a long list of websites and blogs, racking up 554,349 views and counting. She’s busy with interviews, from HuffPost Live to Good Morning America, and interacting with her new fans across the internet.

Image by Mica Angela Hendricks (via busymockingbird.com)

Anthropologist and geneticist Jennifer Raff, the blogger at Violent Metaphors, published a few popular posts last month, from a hotly debated piece on vaccinations to a guide for non-scientists on how to read and understand a scientific paper, featured on sites like Boing Boing, The Browser, BBC Future, and more.

Books? Yep, you’re publishing those, too.

Lori Duron, the mother and writer who writes about her gender nonconforming son at Raising My Rainbow, had an eventful summer, culminating in this week’s release of her book of the same name, published by Random House. Lori’s WordPress.com blog, the first mommy/parenting blog to chronicle raising a gender-creative child, has sparked an important conversation, and we’re happy to see her share her story with others, from recent pieces in Salon and Time Ideas to coverage on Anderson Cooper, the New York Times, and many other outlets.

WordPress.com photographer Steve McCurry has a new book out as well. Steve McCurry Untold: The Stories Behind the Photographs features the best of Steve’s stunning photo stories, taken around the world over the last 30 years, and many items of ephemera never before published. The photo essays on his blog always amaze us, like his recent post “Morning Glory.” Time’s LightBox blog — a WordPress.com VIP site — featured Steve’s book, too.

You write about stuff you care about.

Since we’re on the topic of books . . . you published 29,554 posts about books, 16,315 on fiction, 1,077 on nonfiction, and 53,194 on writing.

Looking closer at some hot topics of the month:

6,311 posts were about Egypt.

13,667 were about Syria.

18,127 were about religion.

27,712 were about summer.

8,449 mentioned US President Barack Obama.

4,986 mentioned singer Miley Cyrus.

1,213 were about fantasy football.

You’re part of an engaged publishing community.

In August, you created 1,083,238 new blogs, for an average of 34,943 blogs a day. Tuesday, August 27, was the most popular day to start a new blog.

You wrote 38,002,002 posts, which racked up a lot of pageviews:

You invited 293,741 users, both existing and new WordPressers, to join your sites. (Thinking about collaborative blogging? Here’s a quick guide to setting up a group blog.)

You added 76,907,314 categories, for an average of 2,480,881 categories per day. (You’re quite an organized bunch, aren’t you?)

You subscribed to 3,388,973 blogs, left 62,318,624 comments on each other’s blogs, and liked 7,228,491 posts. (There’s lots of love in the air, clearly.)

Last month, you embedded 2,024,691 galleries, 12,870 slideshows, 302,521 SoundCloud players, and 9,679,391 YouTube videos.

(And with the new Media Explorer, it’s now easier to add trending content from Twitter and YouTube to your posts, without leaving your post editor.)

Finally, you wowed us with 385 standout posts on Freshly Pressed, bringing this crop of featured bloggers 102,549 clicks.

We look forward to seeing what you all do in September. Happy blogging!

If you’re interested in keeping up with what’s abuzz in the community — from a collection of top reads to publishing news and bloggers in the spotlight — subscribe to WordPress.com Weekend Reads, which we’ll deliver right to your inbox.

You might also enjoy this post:

• WordPress.com By the Numbers: The July 2013 Hot List

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