Before embarking on the 2011 blogging journey

It’s 2011 and before continuing on the awesome journey I’ve had with you over the past 5 years, yes Web AddiCT(s); turned 5 in Decmber 2010, I’d like to take a look back into the rear view mirror at what was popular here based on which posts written in 2010 had the most page views.

Before we have alook at what the most popular post written in 2010 were I’d like to give you a little insight into the overall growth this site has experienced compared to the year before.

• Nearly 500 000 unique visitors clicked through to this blog from search engines, twitter, facebook and various other sources. A 66% increase compared to the year before. It gives me a warm fuzzy feeling to know that nearly 30% of you  came directly here by simply typing webaddict.co.za into your browsers address bar.
• Of those half a million of you who visited the site nearly 1.5 million pages were viewed. 105% more than the year before. Seeing that a large majority of you are South African we’ve moved the blog hosting to a cloud server(free trial) sponsored by the great folks at RSAweb.

Now, onto the 11 most popular blog post written in 2010 in no particular order.

1. The New MXit PC client. With over 27million users MXit is the darling of the (South) African mobile space and looking at the stats running MXit on your PC with MXit evo proved to be an extremely popular post.
2. Jack Parow – I miss. If you’re South African and born in the eighties, like me, this song would have brought back fond memories of childhood.
3. 40 Free SMS/day with Vodacom & Vodacom4me. Vodacom now have two sites, namely vodacom.co.za and vodacom4me.co.za. You can log into both of them with the same credentials and send 20 free SMS messges from each of them. Free SMS has always been popular for the 10+ years I’ve been a Web AddiCT and in 2010 it wasn’t any different.
4. Google Street View South Africa – Most of the major cities in South Africa are now available on Google Street view and you can even immerse into street view of the Kruger National Park and try spot the big 5.
5. Google Maps Navigation South Africa – Google Turn-by-Turn is not available here yet but judging by the attention the post got it must be extremely sought after. If there was any tech I’d like to be introduced to South Africa in 2011 Google Maps Navigation will be it. How hard can it be? There is a work-around to get navigation working on your Android phone but it takes some effort.
6. Nando’s CEO/ Cell C ad – Nando’s have an excellent creative agency churning out top quality advertising. This can be seen by a post that was published with only one month left in 2010 hitting the top 11 of 2010. They even started serving speed chicken (read raw) at the Nando’s in Kloof Street Cape Town.
7. 2010 World Cup live streaming – In 2010 any  South African blog that published any info about the 2010 FIFA World Cup got hit after hit. This blog was no different.
8. Don’t Touch me on My Studio – No, don’t you touch me on my studio Mr Visagie.
9. The OpenMoko Competition – TheOpenMoko was the first Google Android powered device I got my hands on and was fortunate enough to be able to give one away. This was the first competition ran on this blog and proved so successful that Samsung and Nokia competitions soon followed. I hope I’ll be able to give away more mobile devices in 2011. Subscribe to the Competition SMS Alerts on the top right of this page to be one of the first to know when that will happen again.
10. Nokia N8 Competition – Subscribe to the Competition SMS Alerts on the top right of this page to be one of the first to know when that will happen again.
11. HTC Desire & HTC Legend – These must have been the most popular Android powered smart phones made available in South Africa in 2010 if my Google Analytics are anything to go by.

I’d like to wish you a prosperous 2011 and would like to thank you, the readers and advertisers, for all the support over the years. Do you think we should do a 2011 predictions post similar to this one?