HAPPY NEW YEAR!
This entry will remain posted near the top for a couple of days…so, if you are visiting the site for the first time or if you are a frequent visitor please don’t ignore all of the entries below. For example, VAWolf logged an awesome statistical post that follows this.
We just wanted to take a moment to draw your attention to the newest edition of the NC State Alumni Magazine that hit most homes over the last week. Starting on page 36 and ending on page 45 you will see that the magazine printed a series of articles on the impact of the internet at NC State and on the NC State community. We’d like to thank the NC State Alumni Magazine for the attention and prominence that they applied to StateFansNation in the feature piece.
Please note – If you are NEW to SFN and are here based solely on the Alumni Magazine’s article then login and leave us a comment so that we know that you are here.
As some of you know, this blog is about the 5th version (Web 5.0?) of what started as an email newsletter named “The InfoPack” in the early to mid 1990s. Following the InfoPack we evolved to using “ACCBoards.com” and then around 2000 launched Statefans.com which you now know as PackPride.com.
(Interesting trivia note – Statefans.com was actually launched, in part, as a class project while working on my MBA from Kenan-Flagler Business School at UNC-CH. That is right…we got to use UNC’s resources and achieved class credit in support of Statefans/PackPride).
Our original goal at Statefans was to truly build a “Portal to the Pack” where Wolfpackers could have a central source for ALL of the news and conversation that they wanted/needed. We dreamed of having dozens of authors who were responsible for covering all kinds of categories – including what some would call ancillary topics like ‘Centennial Campus’, announcements for alumni events all over the country, ‘Hillsborough Street redevelopment’ and other Raleigh news of interest, news related to individual colleges on campus, and social/greek life at NC State, etc.
But, (a) we couldn’t find enough people to own all of the categories and (b) most fans just wanted to talk sports. We didn’t know it at the time, but Statefans.com: ‘Your Portal to the Pack’ was effectively a blog before blogs existed.
Once we had over 25,000 registered members of our message boards we had no choice but to ‘go commercial with PP. But that left a tremendous void for high quality conversation and editorial content within the NC State online community; so, it was time to go back to our original Statefans roots with the launch of SFN. Luckily, web applications and software had evolved to a point that made what had become known as blogging much easier.
As we turn the page to 2008 with new servers and technical support we are looking forward to wherever our journey takes us and our readers. As some of you know, we kept some statistics last year of our site and the numbers were pretty impressive based on the national attention that the blog received during the Herb Sendek’s departure and Lee Fowler’s attempt to execute something that resembled a coaching search. In 2006 (see relevant entry from mid-2006) we had over 230,000 unique visitors and 12,000,000 hits to the server!
This year, we started keeping statistics on October 20th and the following is what the site produced over the last two months of the year:
340,789 Visits
63,297 Absolute Unique Visitors
921,160 Pageviews
One last note regarding the internet and NC State: If you haven’t checked out the University’s main web site recently then you are missing a treat. After a lot of behind the scenes work, NC State launched a new site this year that is truly first class. It is my understanding that Jason Simon (you may remember his name from formerly working in the Sports Information Department before ‘everyone’s darling’ took over) led the project. Jason deserves a ton of credit and should be owed a huge debt of gratitude by the University.
