Following blog stats

I have successfully weaned myself from looking at our blog statistics (StatCounter, Feedburner, and Hot Stuff 2.0) on a daily basis; because I am interested in how readers find us, where readers are located, and what interests them, I do still review them weekly if for no other reasons than to reset blocking cookies so my personal posts do not add to the count and satisfy my curiosity. This evening I noticed several returning links from Cairo, Egypt that appeared to originate from my personal author page on a web site I am unfamiliar with, uFollow. With curiosity engaged, I followed the link.

"uFollow is a free service that helps you keep track of your favorite bloggers and columnists. Once you create an account you can add authors, sources, and channels to the stream of articles that you receive. uFollow currently tracks more than 10,000 bloggers and columnists from over 1,000 of the world’s leading blogs, magazines, and newspapers." -- About uFollow

It was odd to see a personal author page complete with a vaguely familiar biography. A quick review of the 2010 Computers in Libraries site revealed the biographical information was from my speaker page (and not a reference citation in sight, tsk). Also on the about page was a blurb stating uFollow is a division of Hindawi Publishing; "Hindawi Publishing Corporation is a commercial publisher of peer-reviewed journals covering a wide range of academic disciplines" and in 2007 entered into a partnership with Sage Publications (Hindawi, about us). They also have offices in New York city and Cairo, Egypt.

After spending time this afternoon discussing proliferation of online personal information and importance of knowing what's "out there" as it applies to individuals, it was wonderfully ironic this information came to my attention today. I signed up for an account, which may be the desired response, and added myself to my author shelf. Regardless, it's an interesting venture I may explore further.