Web users, in general, want fresh content, therefore it is typically the new sites or new postings on the site that get the most traffic. LDS.org is no different and, not surprisingly, traffic spikes around General Conference time as members are hungry to feast upon the latest words from our living prophets. In the weeks after conference, archived talks remain among the most popular items on LDS.org. Through the end of October, there were over 1.2 million downloads of October 2008 General Conference talks.
In this instance “downloads” has a specific meaning, which I will explain, but you will see that the 1.2 million figure is actually a conservation estimate. By download, I don’t necessarily mean that the talk was saved to the user’s hard-drive, merely that the talk was read, watched or listened to. I have de-duplicated the figures, meaning that if the same person downloaded the same content multiple times, I only count it once. I also wanted to include the numbers from people watching archived content on the Move player, the new interactive video player the Church is using. Since the Move player is tracked differently, I had to do some additional finagling, but again, I erred on the conservative side and simply took unique visitors to the page. Bottom line, the actual number of archived talks read/listened to/watched is probably much higher than my 1.2 million, conservative estimate.
In the charts below, you will see various breakouts of the 1.2 million downloads of October 2008 General Conference archived content. The numbers are through the end of October.
Summary By Format: Read/Watch/Listen
| Oct 08 Gen Conf Archive Dnlds thru 10/31 | ||
| Format | Downloads | % |
| Read | 502,799 | 40.6% |
| Watch | 429,648 | 34.7% |
| Listen | 306,063 | 24.7% |
| Total | 1,238,510 | 100.0% |
Summary By Technology
| Oct 08 Gen Conf Archive Dnlds thru 10/31 | ||
| Format | Downloads | % |
| Read | 502,799 | 40.6% |
| Watch Move Player | 392,295 | 31.7% |
| Listen MP3 | 225,114 | 18.2% |
| Listen 300K | 60,532 | 4.9% |
| Listen QuickTime | 20,417 | 1.6% |
| Watch QuickTime | 19,050 | 1.5% |
| Watch Windows Media | 14,732 | 1.2% |
| Watch ASX 300k | 3,571 | 0.3% |
| Total | 1,238,510 | 100.0% |
Summary By Session
| Oct 08 Gen Conf Archive Downloads through 10/31 | ||
| Session | Downloads | % |
| General Relief Society Meeting | 53,006 | 4.3% |
| Saturday Morning Session | 262,461 | 21.2% |
| Saturday Afternoon Session | 183,567 | 14.8% |
| Priesthood Session | 110,659 | 8.9% |
| Sunday Morning Session | 126,775 | 10.2% |
| Sunday Afternoon Session | 109,747 | 8.9% |
| Unknown (all Move Player archive views) | 392,295 | 31.7% |
| Total | 1,238,510 | 100.0% |
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