My hopes for this site’s rapid ‘viral’ spread appear to have been somewhat optimistic. Almost a week from launch, we now have just a little over 20 registered users, and 18 experiment suggestions.
I did all the things I suggested in my post on Sunday to try to publicise the site, with, shall we say, mixed results.
Twitter was a mixed bag in itself, with the Guardian’s PlinthWatch eventually promoting me twice but the official tweeting pairing of Oneandother and OneandOtherweb ignoring my pleas for publicity. The real star tweeter was LDN, who kindly accepted my begging tweet when I saw him publicising another plinther and has been keeping his 13,000 followers informed of my progress, resulting in quite a few other people also spreading the word. I daren’t try to mention everyone here who’s tweeted a link to me or I may miss someone out and cause offence, but I did see every one at the time and really appreciated them all – thank you!
A few friends signed up at the site following my Facebook message, but most didn’t – never a greatly reassuring sign if your own friends aren’t even that interested, I suppose 
I’ve no real way of knowing how many people surfed in from the One and Other web site or any other links I’d put on the web, so the success there is pretty hard to judge.
Finally, my three e-mails – one to the One & Other plinthers’ contact e-mail address, and one to each of my two local newspapers, the News Shopper and Bexley Times – have all gone completely ignored for the whole week. It sounds from fellow members of the plinthers-only Facebook group I found a couple of days ago that most local papers are keen to cover their area’s plinthers, so I’m not sure what mine have against me, or art, or whatever.
I found the complete silence from One & Other even more disappointing in a way though – coupled with the two O&O accounts on Twitter also failing to say anything to me, it’s a bit of a disheartening way to be treated, and very much at odds with the overwhelmingly positive feedback I’ve heard about their treatment of plinthers when you’re actually on site preparing for your hour.
(Semi-promisingly, I did get a sudden, out-of-the-blue tweet from oneandother earlier: “Have you had any submissions yet?” Haven’t heard anything else since I replied, but the fact that they asked that rather than clicking through to my web site and seeing the 18 experiments for themselves is a bit odd anyway!)
Some of the more enthusiastic supporters are former plinthers themselves. The inimitable minibeastgirl (who plinthed in the early hours of 20 July) has submitted an experiment, as well as engaging with me on Twitter perhaps more than any other O&O follower. Meanwhile catnip (who played what should perhaps be called plinthctionary earlier this week) has rather excitingly promised to promote my endeavours on her radio show this morning (Saturday), so do tune in to RhubarbRadio.com between 8 and 10am – if you’re awake!
So there is support out there, just not in the volumes best suited to getting the ideas and votes really flowing fast. However, a project like this has ultimately got to be about quality more than quantity, and on that front the site is doing well – there’ve been some superb suggestions and I’m really looking forward to seeing how some of them go on the big day, assuming the voting comes out in their favour.
User ebase’s suggestion of measuring the air quality on the plinth gave me pause for thought: how on earth would I go about that? As luck would have it, though, I used to run the local council web site years ago, and remembered adding a section about air pollution to it, under the instruction of an enthusiastic and knowledgeable colleague in the air monitoring department. I dropped him a line a couple of days ago and it now sounds like, if this experiment goes ahead, I’ll be borrowing and learning how to operate a handheld PM10-measuring device by the end of next week! It’s great how helpful people are when you explain what’s happening and I really appreciate his offer.
Most other suggested experiments only rely on my having more basic equipment, like measuring jugs and pieces of paper, but don’t let that restrict your creativity if you want to suggest something outlandish. As long as I can obtain (cheaply/freely) and carry up what I need, I’m up for more or less anything!
One final point: it’s been suggested to me by a few people that requiring people to register in order to vote, while fairly secure against vote-rigging – which is perhaps not the most pressing of my worries – is likely to result in far fewer votes actually coming in and so a bit less clarity about which experiments will be the most popular to carry out. I’m therefore getting my web guru on the case with this and all being well you’ll be able to vote without logging in some time soon.
Thanks for all the support, tweets, experiments, and so forth. I’ll keep you posted with developments – including details of the evening event we’re planning for Monday (10 August) on the South Bank in London – come and join us to bounce around plinth chatter and experiment ideas if you can make it! More soon…
