The Blog is 2 Years Old

The ICIS Chemicals Confidential blog is two years old today. Like many difficult toddlers hitting the Terrible Twos, it is now moving into the difficult phase for blogs, where many just give up.

So many links to postings on other sites lead to defunct blogs, where the blogger just ran out of enthusiasm after two years, but Chemicals Confidential is happily thriving on its diet of gossip and trivia from the petrochemical industry.

The second year saw more postings, more comments, and more readers than the first year. The Blog is now stuffed with 615 postings and 280 comments, and the Google Analytics map above shows that it is even more widely read than a year ago, reaching 188 countries and an unbelievable 8,980 cities (being least read in: Mnichovice, Chiclayo, Phrae and Portoviejo), although I suspect that a fair few of these hits were attracted more by pictures of cuddly animals than by a thirst for petchem background knowledge.

I wonder if a picture of Knut the Berlin polar bear cub slipped cunningly into next week's conference coverage will provide a similar boost to the Blog's unique user numbers for 2009-2010.