Wow – yesterday was fun! My blog went from an average of 6 hits a day to just under 4,000 hits!

The topic – that Superbowl commercial and my brief criticism of the Chrysler commercial featuring Clint Eastwood (who, by the way, is one of my favorite actors/directors).  On a whim, I sent it to Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit.com, whose blog is one of my favorites. It ‘made my day’ as one fictional film detective used to say. Only once before years ago did I email Glenn with, understandably, no reply as he probably gets hundreds of emails a day. Last night, I sent Instapundit an email and nearly ‘instantly’ he linked back to my site and post. Let Instalanche begin! “Instalanche” or “Instalaunch” is a dramatic spike in traffic driven by a linked post from the widely followed Instapundit.  It was a most awesome surprise, and I believe the timing of it (last post of the day for Instapundit) meant that it had a pretty visible spot on his site until this morning.

So, some numbers, for others who have had an instalanche. On Sunday Feb 3rd I had about 3,900 views. Today, February 4th, I’m nearing 10k views. CRAZY!  I’m not a blogger by any means; I post things from time to time that interest me. During the 2008 election, I posted a a bunch of funnies/commentary about the presidential contest. Lately, I’ve begun posting things that interest me more, things I want to revisit and watch or listen to later. I may do more politics later (comments off) and humor. That is what interests me most.  This also reinforces the strength of Instapundit. He often links to the same fellow bloggers about bigger issues, but he also links to what I would call ‘non-affiliate’ blogs/pages – one-offs because, I assume, he finds the post somewhat interesting to him or somewhat worthy of attention. So his site is more diverse and those wide range of topics keep on appearing, drawing his readers back every day.

The Instalanche was informative (to actually have wide range of data was a first).  Besides the views and other analytics, moderating was a first for me (usually I’m deleting silly comments from friends and family). This time, strangers who were interested in topic at hand were sharing their thoughts. I was pleased that most of the several dozen posts were relatively civil. Thanks readers!  I know you’ll be off to more prolific and interesting bloggers but maybe we’ll meet again.