Well it’s been an exciting and exhausting time, but I declare the Carnival of Gamers a success! A few stats for your digestion:
Total Carnival Entries: 20
Total unique visitors during first 48 hours: 3,279
Total number of pageviews first 48 hours: 5,621
Total number of unique visitors over Memorial Day Weekend: 4,477
Number of links to Carnival: 22 and counting
Links of Note:
InstaPundit (again, a great honor to be linked by the BlogFather)
Slashdot (albeit games.slashdot, but it counts)
Kotaku (I’m a Kotaku fan, thanks for the hat tip, Brian)
Craigslist (this was a weird one, never thought we’d show up here)
digg (thanks to Mike for this one)
There were some cheap shots taken at us in the slashdot comments, I tried to defend them however I could but it’s slashdot, so what can we expect. I did find this gem, though:
“Here you will find the best and brightest video game bloggers from around the world! Never before has such a group been assembled to bring to you the latest insights and observations from the gaming blogosphere. We’re a diverse group here, as you’ll see from the posts but we all have one thing in common — we are passionate about video games.”
Niether of them have a girlfriend either.
And someone who obviously participated but wished to remain anonymous replied:
“Niether of them have a girlfriend either.”
heh. Good thing too, or my wife would kill me.
Classic.
There was also this posted on Computer Games Online. (Deliciously titled “New Superblog Launches, Sticks Foot In Mouth Immediately”) It’s unfortunate, because Mr. Gallant sums up the Carnival by saying
If that’s what “Carnival of Gamers” is going to be about, they may as well not bother.
That’s a shame. If you’ve come here from Computer Games Online, please look around. While Mr. Gallant may not agree with one of the bloggers, don’t assume the rest are more of the same. I’ll be dropping Mr. Gallant a note when I get a chance to let him know he’s missed out on some good blogs. Funny thing is, The Big Corporate Website cgonline.com has only sent us a handful of referrals from his article. That’s not a very big audience they’re reaching. I’ve had more hits from some of the small-fry bloggers than him. Funny, but this is just another MSM vs. Blogger debate, something I didn’t think would happen with the Carnival. But that’s what blogging is all about.
So in conclusion, the feedback I’ve received has been positive, people have emailed me wishing they had known about the Carnival before the submission deadline, others wanting to get in on the next Carnival, and a lot of people thanking us for introducing them to new bloggers (the original purpose). So let’s keep this going! Thomas will be hosting the next one, so get on over there and email him your submissions. I’ve had a few people volunteer to host the next one, I’ll be in touch with you soon. This has been great! Thanks to everyone involved.
Game on!