160,000 by 2020!

Sometime, night before last, Waldo's odometer clicked over to record this blog's 150,000th visitor.

Our readers come, almost evenly, from the United States (53%), and Europe, with almost 20% coming from Italy. Germany, the UK, France, Russia, Ukraine, China and Slovenia follow with about 2.6% each, and Canada thrown into the bargain.

Together, you have made nearly 266,000 page views. 

This, of course, is a rounding error among the blogdom's high-rollers; Huffington Post- numero uno- gets five or six million visits a day. Today, I read a post where one Internet guru explains how I could be getting 150,000 hits a week, no taking 92 months, thanks very much.

Still, it has been an interesting experiment. One day, Andrew Sullivan (who had readers stumping up a million dollars a year to support The Daily Dish before getting bored and striking his tent recently) linked to a Waldopost, and 5,000 of his million-readers-a-day tromped over for a look. 

We had a Week of Thousands when the story of boy-bimbo blogger Will Folks' claimed affair with SC governor Nikki Haley broke (four years later, Folks' tell-all book- half finished by 2012) is still unpublished). 

Nearly all of Waldo's favorite sparring partners from the 2008 election cycle are gone today; some to Twitter; others pulling down their sites, Carthago delendo est-style, sowing the ground with salt, leaving no trace; one has pottered of into an Evelyn Waugh simulacrum, a cranky curate writing letters to the editor of The Telegraph, complaining here of the spottiness of the choristers at York Minster, there of the difficulties of finding the recipe for Sir Winston's favorite Dundee Cake. 

The Atlantic says social media has killed off blogging. 

Stratechery's Ben Thompson argues exactly the opposite. 

But we press on. The Follies song may sum it up:

I've run the gamut, A to Z
Three cheers and dammit, C'est la vie
I got through all of last year, and I'm here
Lord knows, at least I was there, and I'm here
Look who's here, I'm still here