‘Tis the season for all things recap. Case in point: This morning’s inbox fodder featured a nifty end-of-year report (thank you, WordPress.com stat monkeys!) on the Texas A&M Science blog. In case you don’t care to sift through the entire thing available here, I’ll hit the high points as I see them.

In summary, 2014 blew 2013 out of the water. Thirty-four published posts, 5,872 views and 3,235 visitors, compared to 19 posts, 977 views and 523 visitors in 2013. And our top all-time viewing day — 332 on November 25.

To be fair, however, 2013 started a half-year behind, given that the blog didn’t officially launch until June. Fitting, then, that the original post I wrote back in 2013 to pitch the overall blog concept (Heart of the Matter) was the only one from the previous year to grace 2014’s Top 10:

1. A Bittersweet Benchmark (486)
2. The Beauty of Rare Creatures and Social Networking (466)
3. Light My Fire (259)
4. All Work and No Play (240)
5. Winning Teams (206)
6. Life Forces and Legacies (152)
7. You Are Enough (129)
8. Heart of the Matter (97)
9. Angel in Flight (91)
10. Tradition in Action (85)

Seven of those posts topped 100 views, with five exceeding 200. By comparison, only one post logged three-digit-viewing numbers in 2013: the perhaps-coincidentally-titled By the Numbers with 242. The top feeder was Facebook, followed somewhat surprisingly by search engines.

I’ve always enjoyed seeing new countries show up on the world viewing map, and we certainly broke lots of new international ground in 2014 as word (pun intended) has continued to spread. Current reach: 73 countries, which sounds amazingly cool, to me! Not surprisingly, the United States accounts for most of our views (5,323), but can you guess which country is second (170) as the only other that cracked triple digits?

All good news and good fun befitting this blog, which has become one of my favorite self-assignments if not general writing exercises. While in my admittedly old-school book, new media will never trump nor entirely replace traditional media, it sure makes for an enjoyable alternative and accompaniment, ideally for reader and writer.

On behalf of Texas A&M Science, I sincerely thank each of you for being part of this continuous, ever-evolving experiment. Here’s to more stories, additional insights and broader perspectives in 2015!

Oh, and I almost forgot — that No. 2 viewing country? Brazil. Go, GMT!