Happy New Year!

Happy New Year one and all!

As many of you will be aware, The People’s Mosquito project celebrates its second birthday this week. To mark our second year and as a bit of light end-of-year trivia, here are some facts and figures from the past twelve months.

Our website had 49,000 visitors in 2013 – that’s just under a thousand views a week and equals about ten sell-out shows at the Royal Albert Hall (or a day’s attendance at RIAT)! Visitors over the past twelve months have come from no less than 100 countries – most from the UK with the USA and New Zealand following up the rear. The site has now had over 100,000 views since it was launched. The busiest day of the year on the website was July 21st with 1,195 views. In 2013, we added 19 new posts, growing the total archive to 34 posts and we uploaded 51 pictures – that’s about 4 pictures per month. The comments keep coming in too – we’ve now had over 380 comments on the site. Keep them coming please! Comments are free to make and your voice is important to us.

On the social media front, our Twitter account (@peoplesmosquito) has seen encouraging growth over the last twelve months and we now have 2,614 followers with 1,248 new followers in 2013! We’ve tweeted 623 times this year – that averages out at roughly 1.7 tweets a day! Meanwhile, on Facebook, our official Page has had 1,116 new “likes” since this time last year and now has a total of 1,569. The People’s Mosquito Supporters’ Facebook Group now has 906 members –  a growth of 213 in 2013. If you have not yet “liked” our page or joined the Supporters’ group, please think about taking a minute to do so – we would much appreciate it. We’ve had some great comments and conversations taking place on both pages and it has been really useful for us to not only share info but to learn stuff too! There have also been some great Mosquito images and stories posted by supporters – for which we are grateful.

Our promotional video, which appears on our website’s home page and on You Tube and Vimeo, has received 10,001 views since it was published at the end of February 2012. Over the two years since, that’s about 15 views per day!

Our Affiliates have grown in number too and during 2013 we have added some great allies to the list. Among them: former No. 23 Sqn. RCAF Mosquito pilot (and leading Mossie authority) George E. Stewart DFC; renowned aviation artist Simon W. Atack and the de Havilland Aeronautical Technical School – see the full list of Affiliates on our website, and if you think your organisation should be an Affiliate, please get in touch.

We have also welcomed some new members to the team – including, importantly, in the areas of finance and fundraising – two areas that will be massively important in the coming year as we move towards our goal and step the project up a gear or two.

All in all, a good second year’s result and one that shows a steady growth in interest for the project.

As ever, our sincere gratitude goes to everyone who has liked, followed, tweeted, posted, commented, visited, viewed, emailed or otherwise shown support for or interest in the project – we would be nowhere without you.

We hope you will all stick with us into 2014 as we take the project to the next level.

Many thanks, and  a Happy New Year.

The People’s Mosquito Team