February 1, 2011 | Michael Kirk

Hey, UConn: Thanks for Reading This

UConn Today sees more than 100,000 visits in January.

The long-suffering staff of UConn Today recently took a break from toiling day and night to bring you the latest news about your beloved flagship university to note that for the first time, the site has had more than 100,000 visits in a single month. This one: January 2011 – and it topped-out at over 120,000, to be exact.

“So what?” you say.

“So, getting that many visits in one month is a major benchmark for us,” we say. “And it’s an achievement we’re proud of and that we also really need in order to add a sliver of meaning to our otherwise barren and feeble lives.”

By contrast, January 2010 saw only just over 23,000 visits to the site.

Without a doubt the record-breaking 50-plus inches of snow helped drive those numbers up last month as bleary-eyed students and staff made pre-dawn emergency closing checks several times a week to find out if they had to go to work or class that day. Mostly, you didn’t because it snowed so much and so often, Storrs was frequently buried in unprecedented amounts of precipitation. (An aside: why did early settlers stay here after the first winter? What were they thinking? Call me.)

Anyway: yes, the emergency closings page is a big source of traffic as we’ve discussed before, but readership was sharply on the rise before that. The fact we named a new president was a big draw, too: that garnered many thousands of views. So did:

  • The Spring Weekend report.
  • Kiplinger’s Magazine naming us one of the 100 best values among public universities (seriously: check out how much some of those out-of-state or private schools would charge you. We’re a steal. Tell your parents. And your legislators.)
  • Parking Services is making some significant changes to student parking rules, adding a few more doses of rhyme and reason.
  • Also: anything about UConn athletics, which you can’t get enough of.

So we’re thrilled that more and more people are reading the site more and more often because it shows us we’re doing a pretty good job. We really enjoy/desperately need the attention you lavish on us. Please keep it up.