Exit 2020, Enter 2021
January 1st, 2021Twenty Twenty will not go down as the worst year of my life, there is a lot of competition for that title, but for many, 2020 was a wake up to reality that their words and actions actually have consequences. I myself never lost my job or got Covid-19 but I made a lot of sacrifices and basically spent most of the year in a one bedroom apartment in Calgary.
So although I didn’t make a lot of blog posts, I also didn’t accomplish a lot besides saving some money and earning some badges. It is an annual tradition to reflect on the last year including taking a look at the analytics for this website and my various social media channels to see if any insights can be gained.
Untappd
The first and maybe the only social network to send me a year end analytics email/package was the social network for craft beer fans Untappd. I drank way too much beer alone in my apartment in Calgary, I will have to be healthier in 2021 when gyms finally reopen. I’m not sure I can embed anything but I took a screenshot or two so I’ll add those, but I can link to my profile and I did make another post about beer in 2020.
According to Untappd the breweries I drank the most beer from are in Calgary and Lacombe. I’ve never been to Lacombe. I did drink at Inner City Brewing between lockdowns I started going there as it was within walking distances of my apartment. I’ve never been to Cabin, I might bike to some breweries next year, but there are flaws to that plan, for one I don’t like biking over overpasses and I’ve vowed to drink less beer, so I’ll probably stick to places within walking distance, but I may move in 2021, time will tell.
Last.fm
All the cool kids use Spotify or Apple Music or Tidal but I still track my music listening via last.fm. It doesn’t work perfectly. I actually pay Apple for iTunes Match and will switch to their bundle whenever it comes out in Canada. Neither Last.fm nor Apple work seemlessly but as you may have noticed my most listened to artist in 2020 was Townes Van Zandt.
The last “new” Townes album was Sky Blue. I bought it from Fat Possum right away, along with some more of his back catalog, but I never got around to rating all the songs. I try hard to organize and rate my music so I can take advantage of smart playlists.
2020 wasn’t the year I listened to the most music according to Last.fm it was 2017 while I was a CFA® Candidate living in China. Although I did listen to a lot of music this year and I made an effort to buy vinyl from the local record store rather than give all my money to Apple. I also supported a bunch of indy artists directly through their websites and sites like Bandcamp.
Last.fm has a year end report that they’ve been frantically working on, they eventually emailed me, but not before I found and tweeted it myself. It is not 2020 specific, next year the link will be to the report for 2021. So I took a screen shot. The most popular album is a game soundtrack I bought on iTunes likely because I follow the game company on Twitter. They are from Vancouver and I know at least one person who worked on the game. I’ve never played the game, I just like instrumental music sometimes and soundtracks are a good source of this. The most popular track is from an old compilation I think I got in a magazine. I tried to order the album on vinyl but it is out of print. I may have to settle for digital copy of something by the Wrinkle Neck Mules.
Subpop is actually on Bandcamp and that is how I got a special Mudhoney recording. Which isn’t the one I seem to have listened to the most. All these years later Mudhoney is probably my second favourite band that was on Subpop. If you read the post I made about who I listen to the most music by, you should be able to figure who my number one Subpop band is.
It probably says a lot about me that the social networks I started with are about beer and music. But I probably use Twitter the most. I managed to avoid saying/doing anything on social media that would get me in trouble unlike a lot of people in 2020. But I did my share of doom scrolling and making snide comments.
Twitter Analytics is not the best, but if you scroll back in time and do a little simple math you can determine your top tweet of the year, this is mine:
YouTube
It was probably a lie when I said Twitter was the social network I used the most in 2020. Although, I read entirely too many tweets about Trump, news stories about Trump, and books about Trump, I also watched a lot of YouTube videos not about Trump. I never uploaded a single video, but if there is one YouTube video I made slightly popular in 2020 it is this one:
If I follow through with my plan to paint more in 2021 I’ll put work-in-progress pictures on Instagram, that seems to be the most popular thing I did on that social network. I still plan to put photos of my finished miniatures on Flickr. On Black Friday, I even bought a special light box after all these years.
I did the Top Nine photos of the year, but I seem to be getting less popular on Instagram and I don’t like how things were cropped, so here is a slightly different version of my top nine photos on Instagram.
Flickr
I prefer Flickr to Instagram as you can organize your photos plus share and embed them outside Facebook’s walled garden easier. I’m actually a Pro user which means I pay them money even though I rarely post. I did upload some beer photos to Flickr this year, but if you just want to see pictures of beer Untappd or Instagram is probably better, so here is a picture of a Space Marine in Inquisitor Scale.
I used to use Pinterest regularly, then it got blocked in China. I definitely won’t have a section about Facebook analytics. Generally I share stuff on Facebook that I found or posted elsewhere so my family and friends get a second or first chance to see it. Pinterest has analytics if you have a “business” account. I am considered a business according to Pinterest because I have a blog.
I actually think Pinterest analytics may be more useful than Twitter’s but if you pay Twitter money maybe you can easily get a whole year of analytics. And although I hardly posted apparently I had over a million impressions, I guess I have good taste.
They really only want you looking back 3 to 6 months but I can get the most popular pins from my own website or from Instagram or YouTube. I used to pin cool stuff and then have it appear on my homepage via Pinterest using RSS feeds, but they stopped supporting that. That was another blow to my Pinterest usage, now I just tweet. But if I paint more, I’ll try to pin my finished work.
If you read this far and wanted to know what a million people looked at or maybe it was just one person looking 1,496,946 times, let me try to find a popular pin.
The old Pinterest embeds I made broke, so let’s see how long this one lasts. This image is actually from Flickr and was taken at an Astronomi-con I didn’t attend. It got over 100,000 impressions in the last 90 days according to Pinterest analytics.
WordPress
Although more a platform or an open source software project rather than a social network, what you’re reading is a WordPress blog right now and I have others. WordPress definitely has analytics so here is what they said was popular in 2020. You don’t have to be an expert in analytics to see I’ve successfully gotten less popular every year. Luckily, I don’t really care.
Actually since I posted more than once in 2020, I was more popular than I was in 2019. This graph is for my miniature painting blog and there is a reason I and most people use Google Analytics instead of WordPress’s own analytics. I’m declaring this the most popular miniature painting post of the year. My declaration is based on the number of comments and what Instagram says.
The other blog I’ve successfully made less popular is the one of unofficial CFA study material. I just scrolled back up and put the ® symbol after my first use of the acronym. In 2020, CFA Candidates definitely learned that things do not always go as planned.
The CFA curriculum changes every year, but the real reason my blog has gotten less popular is a lot more people care about CFA study material than when I became a CFA Candidate. That was so long ago, WordPress doesn’t even think I should link to it!
Google Analytics
I couldn’t tell you the last time I looked at my Google Analytics, but Google probably can tell you. If I want to know what is popular on this blog or domain I need to consult Google. Google wants me to use their mobile app, which I may have installed on my phone, but I prefer the web interface, especially while blogging.
Google also wants me to change how I report usage to them. That isn’t in my 2021 plans but according to the graph below, I’ve successfully gotten less popular in Google in 2020.
Donald Trump was right, you can get tired of winning.
In 2021 I plan to upgrade PHP on the server, then I can upgrade WordPress. I am a major release behind again. Then I can run the latest greatest plugins which usually just leads to more headaches. I also need to write some new PHP and JavaScript but in 2020 I did not want to spend yet more time seated at this desk fixing slightly different IT problems than I fix in my day job.
Google doesn’t have many insights at first glance. I’ve managed after decades of search engine optimization to make my homepage the most popular page on my website. The most popular Muskblog post was actually made last year, what can I say, I spent a lot of time trying to get my old computer to work. The most popular post I published last year was also about computer problems. If you blog about your computer problems, there is a possibility someone online may contact you with the answer.
The most popular day for this website was September 15th, 2020 did I publish or tweet anything on that day? I think I just shared a link to an old webpage. I could probably be a lot more popular if I didn’t dislike Facebook. Dig that late 90s early 2000s web design though.
Goodreads
I spent way too much time reading tweets, news stories, and watching videos online in 2020. I did not quite make my reading goal. I’m hoping I can get away with reading less Microsoft related material but the next book I read is probably going to be about DAX, as we need more DAX expertise at work. I track the books I read on Goodreads which of course is now owned by Amazon. I took a picture but they did my year in books.
2020 In Conclusion
Most are glad to see 2020 end. Many are really looking forward to January 20th. Me I’ll be glad when covid case graphs go down like graphs of my popularity online. It takes a long time for me to write a blog post nowadays. It is much easier to make a tweet or even post to Instagram and spam hashtags for cheap hits than it is to collect voluminous information, reformat pictures, upload everything, spellcheck, fix the grammar, and make Yoast’s plugin happy. But if you’ve read this far and have thoughts on 2020 or analytics or my usage of social media you can leave a comment below.
This entry was originaly posted on , it was last edited on and is filed under: Rambles and tagged: Analytics, Coronavirus, Social Media.