Web users, in general, want fresh content, therefore it is typically the new sites or new postings on  the site that get the most traffic. LDS.org is no different and, not surprisingly, traffic spikes around General Conference time as members are hungry to feast upon the latest words from our living prophets. In the weeks after conference, archived talks remain among the most popular items on LDS.org. Through the end of October, there were over 1.2 million downloads of October 2008 General Conference talks.

In this instance “downloads” has a specific meaning, which I will explain, but you will see that the 1.2 million figure is actually a conservation estimate. By download, I don’t necessarily mean that the talk was saved to the user’s hard-drive, merely that the talk was read, watched or listened to. I have de-duplicated the figures, meaning that if the same person downloaded the same content multiple times, I only count it once. I also wanted to include the numbers from people watching archived content on the Move player, the new interactive video player the Church is using. Since the Move player is tracked differently, I had to do some additional finagling, but again, I erred on the conservative side and simply took unique visitors to the page. Bottom line, the actual number of archived talks read/listened to/watched is probably much higher than my 1.2 million, conservative estimate.

In the charts below, you will see various breakouts of the 1.2 million downloads of October 2008 General Conference archived content. The numbers are through the end of October.

Summary By Format: Read/Watch/Listen

Oct 08 Gen Conf Archive Dnlds thru 10/31
Format Downloads %
Read        502,799 40.6%
Watch        429,648 34.7%
Listen        306,063 24.7%
Total    1,238,510 100.0%

Summary By Technology

Oct 08 Gen Conf Archive Dnlds thru 10/31
Format Downloads %
Read        502,799 40.6%
Watch Move Player        392,295 31.7%
Listen MP3        225,114 18.2%
Listen 300K          60,532 4.9%
Listen QuickTime          20,417 1.6%
Watch QuickTime          19,050 1.5%
Watch Windows Media           14,732 1.2%
Watch ASX 300k             3,571 0.3%
Total    1,238,510 100.0%

Summary By Session

Oct 08 Gen Conf Archive Downloads through 10/31
Session Downloads %
General Relief Society Meeting          53,006 4.3%
Saturday Morning Session        262,461 21.2%
Saturday Afternoon Session        183,567 14.8%
Priesthood Session        110,659 8.9%
Sunday Morning Session        126,775 10.2%
Sunday Afternoon Session        109,747 8.9%
Unknown (all Move Player archive views)        392,295 31.7%
Total    1,238,510 100.0%

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