The stats, part 1: gender and frequency of visits

In February, VIDA, the organization of women in the literary arts, came out with a compelling set of figures showing the under-representation of women in publishing and book reviewing. Amy King (a poet who happened to be one of the very first people to support Typetrigger with a piece of her writing), noted that the publishing figures do not accurately reflect the numbers of women who are writing. Much was said and blogged about the numbers, and many organizations looked at their own gender breakdowns to see how they measured up. As a woman-founded project, Typetrigger felt a need to search our data for some answers and see what is going on in our community. Since we stopped asking new members about their location and gender upon sign up, many of our users have declined to share this with us, which makes our numbers a little fuzzy. It appears that our breakdown is close to half women and half men (note women are red in this graphic, while men are dark gray). 

On a day-to-day basis, about equal numbers of men and women write on Typetrigger. About equal numbers are "liked," and a few more women than men have applied for our Summer 2011 grant. Obviously Typetrigger is neither a publisher in the the traditional sense, nor are we reviewers, but I thought it is interesting that our own numbers seem to bear out the idea that writers are about equally likely to be women as men.

Here is another fun stat about our users:

Only about 8 percent of our daily visitors write on Typetrigger. Even assuming that another 40 percent of our daily visitors are writers who simply are not writing on a particular day, it appears that half or more of our community is just here to read. Maybe they have never written, or maybe they only rarely do, but they seem to come--and come back. 

Here is another funny fact: those readers who don't write also do not "like." We know they must like what they are reading or they wouldn't be coming back to read. But they are shy. Maybe they don't want us to notice them. I encourage all members of our Typetrigger community, even those who only read, to participate in liking as well as sharing writing from the site. It is an incredible feeling to see that your words have resonated with someone, even (especially?) if that someone is not a writer. Don't be shy, we are glad you are here!

Typetrigger at week one

Week one! We made it! Thank you to all of our early adopters. It has been a fantastic first week, and the momentum is really starting to get going. It is thrilling to see new people sign up every day and start using Typetrigger, and we keep getting great feedback. We are thrilled to death with the amazing review we got from one user, Dulce, who called Typetrigger, "just about the coolest thing I’ve seen done with social media and writing." You can read her full review at her blog, Gum in My Hair. People are starting to say some pretty swell things about us on Twitter as well, and we hope that if you are diggin' the site you will find a way to tell the world about it too.

And now, some 'ittle changes we have made:

One of the biggest concerns new users have had is finding content the first time they log on. We are thinking about ways of making the process easier, but for now you will note that we added four more Recent Triggers for browsing from your Home page. We hope that by being able to browse a full eight past triggers everyone will find plenty of variety as they explore. We will enhance browsing features more soon.

You might also note our little PSA about invitation sharing. It seems that many users were not aware that they could invite more friends from within their own Profile page. We renamed the tab: it now says "Invite Friends!" (instead of the dull "beta invitations" that it used to sport). And Mr. Lowbrow is reminding you all to do just that. Every new account comes with five invitations to share. Typetrigger is only going to get more interesting if we get new writers involved, so spread the word.

Hats off to all of you for putting your words on our wire. We are having a blast reading what you all come up with, and it is inspiring to know that you are all starting to find one another. There is now officially enough stuff on Typetrigger that it takes a dedicated effort to read it all. Isn't it fun to remember what a pleasure reading (and writing) can be?