How the mighty are fallen; in olden days I was fairly easily able to see what my top Facebook and Twitter posts of the year had been, but changes to the interfaces make that impossible now. Bluesky also has yet to get in the game of accessible metrics, and once they do, their offer will become even more attractive.
Mastodon is not my favourite of the microblogging platforms, but it does at least let me see how well my posts are doing through MastoMetrics. My top four most liked and most boosted Mastodon posts were the following:
4th most liked, 3rd most boosted (this got dozens of replies as well, well worth looking at):
3rd most liked, 4th most boosted:
2nd most liked and boosted:
And top Mastodon post of the year:
I post much less often on Instagram, so it’s fairly easy to extract the top three posts of the year. In third place, an encounter at Worldcon:
In second place, a bit of self-promotion in the context of the British election:
And in top place, an unsuccessful attempt at communicating across the generations:
LinkedIn is becoming an increasingly important element in my online presence, especially professionally. Six high-scoring LinkedIn posts:
5th highest number of likes, 4th highest number of impressions, announcing my lecture in Belfast in April:
5th highest number of impressions, equal 3rd highest number of likes, the actual lecture once I had given it:
Third highest number of impressions (a little behind in likes), the impact of the new Northern Ireland constituencies:
Third highest number of likes (a little behind on impressions), my colleague’s candidacy in the Belgian municipal elections in October:
Most liked, 2nd most impressions, chairing a Brussels event for the European Democracy Youth Network, one of the NGOs that I am involved with (but won’t embed, I think because too many photographs).
Most impressions, 2nd most liked, an article about the problem of bogus thinktanks in Brussels lobbying:
As for this humble blog, there are a few old entries that have proven to have lasting popularity for reasons I do not know. My write-up about William Wordsworth’s French daughter is top, followed by my analysis of the rate of increase of Victoria and Albert’s descendants, my 2023 tourist pics from the Forbidden City, a review of a collection of schoolkid howlers and (some way behind) Bill Hall’s history of his family and Narrow Water Castle. My top ten posts written in 2024 were:
10) My debunking of Anthony Sheldon’s defence of Liz Truss’s approach to Northern Ireland:
9) My first post of the year, looking at fictional portrayals of the year 2024:
8) My interrogation of the Belgian political parties as I decided how to vote in the June election (this got boosted a bit by POLITICO):
7) and 6) My account of running this year’s Hugo awards:
5) My obituary of my great-aunt, who died on Christmas Day last year at the age of 107:
4) My review of Liz Truss’s autobiography, which may have had as many readers as the book itself:
3) My refusal to analyse the published 2023 Hugo nomination statistics, which were blatantly cooked:
2) My statement on taking on the role of Hugo administrator for 2024:
1 ) Back in the real world, my analysis of the impact of the new boundaries on the elections in Northern Ireland (cf the #2 post on Instagram and one of the top LinkedIn posts):
So, it seems that there are several different sets of readers. My infrequent statements on Northern Ireland are still seen as pretty authoritative. My involvement with the Hugos received a lot of attention. And people just like pictures of cute kids, even if I am also in them.