When Science and Lazy Journalism Collide

“When Science and Lazy Journalism Collide…” was how Stephen Fry described this Blog within a short but sweet tweet that, in a turn, arrived out of the dark blue of early morning and transformed my Twitter feed into a blinding blur of new follower notifications and 140 character handshakes; it was a feed frenzy.

@StephenFry Excellent blog from @JFDerry – when science and lazy journalism collide… [1:40 AM Oct 7th via Tweetie for Mac]

The Fryster, the “King of Twitter”, had thus caused a tweetgasm in my lap (or, more precisely on my laptop, in my lap, where it was not unusually at the time). The ‘Lord of Chance’ had presented an opportunity for my blogging to reach a wider audience, and for that I was digitally grateful.

@stephenfry deeply honoured sir x [7 October 2010 00:40:47 BST via Echofon in reply to stephenfry]

And that was indeed the outcome of the now famous Fry Effect, a 1,101% increase for the week’s Blog traffic, reaching a staggering 3,540 views on that day, alone. Ironically, because Stephen had omitted to include a direct link to the post that I assume had caught his attention, Lies, Lies, Lies (691), it actually had less than half of the visits that my Home page received (1,437), and about half of the hits on the most recent post that had been appearing at the top of the list on the Home Page, Wars of the Word (1,124). But, hey, I’m most certainly not complaining!

Another interesting aspect of the Fry Effect is the lag effect of more people coming to the Blog as they catch up on what Mr Fry has been up to over the last few days plus, no doubt, previous visitors returning with waning interest to see if there have been any follow-up posts.

Well, sorry, but it has taken until now; book proposal submitted and various tasks have been done. (Plus, I have to admit, I was sufficiently mesmerized by the decaying visitor pattern to hold off a little longer.) More “proper” posts will soon follow this interim comment, that I promise. By the by, if you are a literary agent looking for a client who writes like this and has been endorsed by the mighty Stephen Fry, then please do get in touch.