It's not the number of members that matter, it is the amount of regular participants!

Haven't noticed.  Thank you.

But how many have not blogged for awhile? I just checked my standing in California and I'm 99. So I wanted to see how fast I can move up, which depends on how the ones in front of me are racking up their points. Looks like I can get up there a ways passing people who have stopped blogging.

There has been a noticeable increase in members who have joined with the specific purpose of spamming us. 

is that "real strength" or spammy strength.....

Quality over quantity.  My sense is the number is increasing because of all the spammers creating profiles so they can spam-o-rama the site and the members. 

I'm not aware of that, thanks for letting us know :)

These numbers are misleading. Look at the daily lists of new members.

I agree with Wayne, that's a misleading figure for sure. I mean, it's great and has been close to 300K for a very long time. But the number of valuable, consistent regular participants I would estimate is maybe 20% of that number. Which is fine. It's less noisy that way.

I agree with Wayne Martin 

Andrew,

I am 100% in agreement with Wayne Martin .  I followed some of the newbies, they come out of the chute eager and willing to blog and then quietly disappear.  A

      No political party, no religious group, no website like AR, will ever delete members, even if they die and no longer exist.  It's all about the numbers!*

      *AR did some sort of purge a few years ago.  They deleted 10K or 20K inactive accounts.

User count increasing is good for sales and AR's income from ads.  Hopefully some of those users will become bloggers and active members.

Still the number of active members does not climb much

That's because it never goes down, you can be inactive for years and still be on the rolls. The only way to get off the roll is to do something seriously WRONG Andrew Mooers | 207.532.6573 

That is great to hear, Andrew! We need more fresh faces!

Can't say I've paid much attention. At the end of the day, I'm more about quality than quantity in all facets of my life and business.

This is interesting - however, are they participating or just signing up?

I haven't paid attention. I wonder what the percent is of actual active bloggers versus those who create profiles...including our spammer "friends?"

good to hear

I did notice it crossed over the 300,000 mark again. I wonder how many are valid accounts.

Have not noticed.

Nope, but I thought we were already over 300K.

Andrew Mooers | 207.532.6573 Where are they??

Sure doesn't feel like it is increasing.  Many have stopped posting, and in the blog roll, several post MULTIPLE posts, and never interact here.

No, never paid attention, but if you visit new posts, you'll notice a lot of spam first timers......

Yes I noticed the total number a few weeks ago... but the worrying point is how many of these accounts are just accounts in name only... no activity I wonder what the ACTIVE account numbers are doing?

yes, I have noticed.

But I also visit the FIRST BLOG section frequently.

What percentage of NEW MEMBERS are offering escort services in New Delhi?  CLick the link and take a look. Accounting services, carpet cleaning and some in a languge unkown to me. And ALL of these will be counted as new members including those who do not post.

The good news is that every week FIVE real people actually post their fist blog and get a warm welcome to the Rain Train.

It will take a lot of weeks to add 20,000 real estaet agents at the 5-a-week rate.

No.

Andrew Mooers | 207.532.6573 - wow! Congrats to AR for reaching this milestone!

I would like to see the number of active users who wrote at least a blog a week. 

Growth is always nice to see here.

If only that showed up in the Q&A and blog comments. 300,441  with only 441 actively participating, or so it feels.