Time for another blog status update.
Popular blog posts, late April to late October 2025
Checking over my most popular posts written between April 23 and October 23, 2025 (covering six months):
- The top 10 US streaming services (2025 edition)
- Media companies that still support DEI (and alternatives to ones that don’t)
- Recommended Google alternatives (2025 edition)
- Where to buy DRM-free digital comics (2025 edition)
- 2024 US home video revenue: streaming makes up nearly all viewing; physical media sales fall below $1 billion
Streaming and home video are popular topics, of course. Unfortunately, also popular given current events: a post about media companies removing diversity initiatives (DEI) to appease a bigoted Trump administration.
There’s also still a desire for DRM-free digital comics; comic fans clearly haven’t forgotten about what Amazon did to Comixology, and why owning one’s own media (without digital locks) matters.
And the most popular posts overall for the same time period:
- Tech review: Samsung Galaxy Tab A9
- Why do so many Black superheroes have electrical powers?
- The top 10 US streaming services (2025 edition)
- Media server review: Jellyfin
- Where can you buy DVDs and Blu-rays?
My tablet review’s still popular for some reason, despite that the Samsung Galaxy Tab A9 is a few years old by now.
The state of streaming services is also leading to a spike in interest for self-hosting and owning one’s own media. Jellyfin’s gotten an uptick in interest, probably related to Plex paywalling even more features. And some people still want to know where to buy DVDs and Blu-rays, which can’t be deleted by a studio on a whim.
Sources of blog traffic, late April to late October 2025
Looking at sources of blog traffic for the past six months by percentage:
- Search engines: 60.5%
- Direct entry: 37%
- Campaigns: 1.3% (mostly from ChatGPT)
- Websites: 0.7%
- Social networks: 0.5%
Despite my best efforts to block AI crawlers, some traffic’s coming from ChatGPT and similar AI based sources. Fortunately, it’s a small percentage (hovering in the 1% range). The vast majority of traffic is coming from search engines (specifically Google, DuckDuckGo, and Bing) and direct links.
Looking at significant social network traffic (by percentage of its already-smallish total):
- Bluesky: 61.9%
- Facebook: 11.2%
- Mastodon: 8.8%
- Reddit: 6.1%
- Twitter: 4.4%
Unsurprisingly, the social networks I personally use (and share blog post links on) are two of the most popular: Bluesky and Mastodon. Meanwhile, Facebook’s the most popular mainstream social network, followed by Reddit and Twitter. (Again, please leave Twitter; there’s no reason to keep using it.) Outside of the top five, YouTube, Tumblr, and Pinterest also gave the site a few hits.
Photo from Wokandapix (Pixabay)
