How many people are on ChinesePod?

There was a recent blog post pointing to some numbers. The story is links to mentions 250,000 users in 110 countries and "thousands" of paid subscribers. Of course I'm sure the actual numbers are trade secrets. http://www.shanghaidaily.com/sp/article/2007/200705/20070531/article_317806.htm

ONLINE LOOKUP, POP-UPS, AND PINYIN - One excellent resource is adso at: http://www.adsotrans.com/ It's then a simple copy-and-paste away from seeing Chinese in whatever form you prefer, including with English popup translation/lookup and/or vocab lists. Why Cpod doesn't have an obvious "Tools" tab I don't know, is it the 2% residuals? ;p

The traffic stats show a regular 250,000 visitors, wihich we infer to mean listeners. We've had many millions of lesson downloads, though we have no idea how many people that invovles. The percentage of people who get invovled in the community aspects of any website thedns to be in the region of 1% or so. It's probably similar here. Go figure!

I wonder why so few people get involved. That's an interesting figure.

The forum ClustrMap says 551149 visits since 12 Jun 2006, but I think that's total visits rather unique visitors.

Some, like me, wonder what's the benefit of getting involved. .. Convince me! At least I have started to have a look at the formus and not just doggedly download and study lessons...

wildyaks, You've prompted a great question and one that requires a systematic answer. I beleive there are many many reason to get invovled in the community - learning is a social activity, after all. This could be the subject of a blog post pretty soon.

wildyaks, start with language questions, especially on the lesson content (in the Comments). If you actively reflect the language in the lessons, questions will almost automatically pop up. Both the answers (either coming from other users or the teachers here) and the questions bring us all ahead. It is a win-win-situation. Furhermore the community finds answers to almost all (even the most obscure) China and Chinese related questions, and provide you with all sorts of vocab, experiences with diverse learning methods and tools, URLs of ressources, experiences with traveling to and living in China etc. etc. After a while you will find that *answering* questions (or trying to do so) bring you ahead as well (e.g. find the URL of an Chinese online supermarket...). There are further motivational and personal benefits that will grow later, but those are less tangible.

To go to Erikalee's question, does 'involvement' mean paid subscribers?

I'm involved to the tune of a couple hundred bucks a year. A pretty small price to pay for something which gives back so much. Wildyaks, the reason to get involved is that there is so much mutual learning going on. I learn at least as much from co-learners as I do from the actual podcasts themselves. One can also learn by offering help to others, once one feels confident anough to teach. Some might call this mere enlightened self interest. But I think it is community. 老戴

erikalee here's another place: http://blog.praxislanguage.com/2007/06/08/chinesepod-spanishsense-and-praxis-in-the-economist/

Sorry, RoninDC. 老戴 Lǎo Dài = Old Dai = me.

er.. ok I have to say I don´t do that much (sorry) but the most users who post there with characters write down the words and very often the explaination too. And after a while you recognise you know some of the characters and the number of characters you know will grow soon. And there are links to get programms that help you with the characters (and give you the translation of them) are easy to find all over Chinesepod and the community helps if you have problems with what ever.

Hi Laodai- I hadn't even read your post so certainly was not responding directly. But it looks like so, so sorry. Excuter- your point is absolutely true. My post was much less of a criticism than observation. But I realize that wasn't clear, so sorry bout that.

I always try to include pinyin and a translation with my characters, at every level. It makes the interactions much more user friendly. Plus, if I'm saying something incorrectly, someone can catch it and correct me.

mostly I´m that proud of myself having written down the characters that I forget to write them down again in words and to translate ´em.

Thanks for the comments and suggestions. But doesn't being involved in this community of learners just take up a whole lot of time which I (in my case) might just as well spend going out into the streets to speak real Chinese (although not quite standart putonghua...) I find that it takes time to read through what's going on and get something meaningful out of ongoing discussions.

you could download the lessons and listen to them when you have the time. And for the discussions as well you can go to them when you have the time (mandarin on your terms remember? ) :-)

Geesh. I go away for two days.. For only 1% of the users, you all sure are talkative. :-) RonInDC - I wanted to know how many users total, but I was curious about how many then are regular posters. I may have sort of made the assumption that if you paid the premium fee, you'd probably be someone who posts at least now and again. I agree with laodai that I learn a lot every time I post or read others comments. I do have a question though.. and I know it's probably been answered elsewhere, but if you don't understand the characters someone posts, what's the best/easiest way to translate those? My dictionary, although cool, is definitely not the way. Something electronic perhaps? In terms of "why get involved".. I think Ken is right, that "active learning" is very important. If you're getting that from elsewhere, then why get involved online, but for me it makes me feel like I have all these friends who are learning along with me, and when I get stuck, I ask, and when I feel like blowing off my studies, I think, I'd better not because I'll miss what Jenny and Ken said today and all the others will have already heard. It's encouragement, it's help, it's practice.. it's fun. Even funny. You all are a riot sometimes. Thanks for answering my question everybody.

Why not get involved? A big part of my work deals with just that. Actually very easy to find specific reasons. One? Using characters in newbie posts. Automatically excludes.