I don’t usually like to discuss traffic, but here goes. Over the relatively short history of this website there have been a number of peaks in the traffic here, usually coinciding with some particular event. The first big surge came with the MTCurly plug-in, which is now really starting to show its age. However a single link from Todd Dominey had the counters rolling. Then there was quiet in the land, and I slowly but surely built up a readership of people searching for “enron women nude” and other interesting things. And then of course there’s Tantek, Christine, Jeffrey, Kathy, and Rannie.

Then came my pilgrimage to South by Southwest, and as a result of meeting people and posting summaries of the sessions, my hits rose predictably. At least until this picture showed up in Kottke’s link blog and had my head spinning and the counter rolling.

More recently, two incidents have made me rethink my entire approach to blogging. First my blog was invaded by the French. I’m not kidding. If anyone can tell me what this means I would greatly appreciate it, because all I know is it links to a photo of the lovely Sarah C. with one of my keys. Since then a number of comments have been left on various pictures of Sarah that say things like “Sensualité.” Speculation has run wild, especially since no one I know can get a good translation of the text, but the general consensus is that Sarah is secretly some sort of underground “entertainment” star in France and her rabid fans somehow stumbled across this site.

But today was the day that broke all the rules. I was expecting a bit of traffic from the new stuff but it came instead from a surprising source. Yes, I’ve been Barlowed.

Anyway, this is all tangential to what I’ve been trying to say the entire time, my new revelation. The whole writing thing has been done. People don’t need another interesting website, they’ve got so many of those they line them up like cattle in aggregators and extract their content in such a manner as to get through as many as possible. What the world is really thirsting for is web celebrity paparazzi. You want scandalous pictures of the web personalities you know and love, and I want to give them to you. We can have the exposé pictures, something like Tantek using Safari; the scandal photos, which could involve pretty much any situation with a certain blonde SxSW panelist; and finally the relationship tracker, where to start, there are tons of these going around.

I see untold dozens of dollars waiting to be tapped in this nascent market. Obviously this is too large a task for me alone, so any help would be greatly appreciated. I’m also curious to hear some thoughts on this. How long before we see Josh Davis while standing in line at the supermarket?

This is the funniest thing I’ve seen all day:

Saddam’s doctor called a meeting of all the Saddam’s doubles.

“Men, I’ve got some good news and I’ve got some bad news. The good news is Saddam is still alive. The bad news is he lost an arm.”

I guess the cat is out of the bag now. In the fine tradition of all the other blog awards out there, I am proud to announce the Anti-Photobloggies, the world’s coolest photoblog awards. What’s going to be neat about it (I think) is that in addition to sites, individual photos can win awards. So go check it out and spread the word.