Activity Statistics on DW and IJ

[charmian]

Was looking at the activity stats on DW and IJ:

Dreamwidth:
# That are active in some way: 23490
# That have ever posted an entry: 43675
# That have posted an entry in last 30 days: 13701
# That have posted an entry in the last 7 days: 9187
# That have posted an entry in the last 24 hours: 4164

Insanejournal:
# ... active in some way: 95644
# ... that have ever updated: 379539
# ... updating in last 30 days: 46013
# ... updating in last 7 days: 14521
# ... updating in past 24 hours: 4288

For the sake of comparison, LJ:
# ... active in some way: 1934105
# ... that have ever updated: 14800990
# ... updating in last 30 days: 971089
# ... updating in last 7 days: 485271
# ... updating in past 24 hours: 164743

What struck me as most interesting was that while DW and IJ have a similar amount of users who have posted an entry in the last 24 hrs, otherwise, IJ has substantially higher posting stats over longer time periods, and a much higher amount of users who are 'active in some way,' however that's defined.

So what this suggests is that IJ has a larger active userbase (about four times as large as DW's), in general, but they post less frequently on average. DW has fewer people, but they post more frequently, on average. (Less breadth, more depth?) To put it another way:

Active userbase:Posted in the last 30 days
DW: ~1.7:1
IJ: ~2.1:1
LJ: ~2.0:1

Active userbase:Posted in the last 7 days
DW: ~2.6:1
IJ: ~6.6:1
LJ: ~4.0:1

Active userbase:Posted in the last 24 hrs
DW: ~5.6:1
IJ: ~22.3:1
LJ: ~11.7:1

I was actually surprised that on LJ-style services, consistently half of the active userbase posts during a month. I had expected there would be more people who only commented or did something other than post. Anyway, I wonder if DW's active userbase were to climb to the size of IJ's, whether the active user:24 hr ratio would hold, or whether it would decline to something more like LJ's? Perhaps the active DW userbase is because DW is only a year old and has attracted a lot of 'early adopter' types, or because it tends to attract people who post more than the avg LJ/IJ user?

Comments

[foxfirefey]

Remember that IJ is the stalwart preferred home of many an RPer, due to no invite codes and lots of icons for free accounts, and RP users generally will have multiple accounts for characters they play in their games. The lack of invite codes and admin time also cultivates the same kind of spam problems LJ sees but fights against.

You can see this by looking at the new/recently updated stats page:

http://www.insanejournal.com/stats.bml

I do think IJ is bigger than DW, just not 4x as many active users bigger.

[charmian]

Yeah, that's true, but it's at the same time hard to say how much bigger it is then.

BTW, do either IJ or DW include feeds in any of these stats?

[foxfirefey]

I believe, so, yes; we have a bug to split up account types in stats.