I have been blogging about technology topics for over 5 years now, with topics ranging from JavaScript and Silverlight to the more modern AngularJS and Single Page Applications. This deck explores the history of my blog, the individuals who make it possible and the topics that have driven its popularity through the years.

1. C#er : IMage
A RETROSPECTIVE: 2009 – 2015
JEREMY LIKNESS (@JEREMYLIKNESS)

2. 2009: Technology Blog
Although I had prior experience with fitness blogs, this was my first technology blog. I didn’t waste time with introductions and
dove right in with my first post about Nhibernate and Complex Types for Native Keys in March 2009. I decided I would blog
about topics I was working on (at the time, as Director IT of AirWatch).
Photo Copyright © 2014 Jeremy Likness

3. Visitors
2009 was a short year and my posts
were all over the place. In 2010 I
moved from AirWatch to Wintellect
and began writing about my business
experience with Silverlight. This
created an enormous surge of visitors.
In 2012, the death of Silverlight was
proclaimed and with it I saw the death
of unique visitors to my blog. Recently
my posts about real world experience
building HTML5 SPA applications with
JavaScript and AngularJS seem to be
drawing people back.
0
20,000
40,000
60,000
80,000
100,000
120,000
140,000
160,000
2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
Unique Visitors by Year

4. 2010: Silverlight
2010 was the year of Silverlight. All of my Wintellect projects were Silverlight related and my blog posts combined with projects and
speaking engagements led to a surge of the most unique visitors in the history of C#er : IMage. My “MVVM Explained” would go on to be
the most read article of all time, but the 2nd most popular article that year was a biased defense of Silverlight’s future.
Photo Copyright © 2014 Jeremy Likness

5. Referrals
The source of referrals to C#er : IMage has changed dramatically over the years.
◦ 2009: CodeProject.com, SilverlightShow.net, and GeeksWithBlogs.net were my top 3 referrers
◦ 2010: My new job combined with the popularity of Silverlight drove traffic from forums.Silverlight.net,
Wintellect.com, and by organic searches through Google.com
◦ 2011: Support at forums.Silverlight.net continued to be a top referrer, with syndicated articles driving
traffic from team.Silverlight.net and answers to questions referencing my blog posts at
StackOverflow.com
◦ 2012: Still linked to from froms.Silverlight.net, a number of referrals also came through
Stackoverflow.com, and for the first time Twitter’s link shortening service (t.co) was the 3rd highest
referrer
◦ 2013: With my renewed focus on Windows 8 traffic shifted to come from social.TechNet.Microsoft.com,
StackOverflow.com, and Social.MSDN.Microsoft.com (mostly Windows 8 topics)
◦ 2014: Twitter was my #1 referrer, followed by social.TechNet.Microsoft.com and CodeProject.com

6. 2011: Death Spiral
2011 was the real start of Silverlight’s death spiral in popularity. My MVVM article remained the #1 read, and #2 was a video
about dependency injection. The #3 article of 2011 was a generic C# article comparing properties and fields.
Photo Copyright © 2014 Jeremy Likness

7. Mobility
Google shows less than a fraction of a
percentage of visitors to my blog used
a mobile device in 2009. The number
of phone users increased steadily then
ironically dropped as tablet access
increased between 2012 and 2013. In
2014 you can see mobile access using
both phones and tablets literally
exploded – 1 in 10 of my visitors
accessed the site from a mobile
device. Part of that is due to
improvements to the blog to make it
more mobile-friendly, but no one can
ignore the surge of devices being used
by consumers now to access the
Internet anytime from anywhere.
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
% Phone and Tablet Visits
Phone Tablet

8. 2012: Rebranding
In 2012 I struggled to rebrand my blog to move on from Silverlight. My focus initially was Windows 8 based on the continued
support for XAML and C#. Top articles included a tip about using symbols for icons and facts about ARM and the then-called
Metro mode of Windows 8. I also published the best-selling book Building Windows 8 Apps with C# and XAML.
Photo Copyright © 2014 Jeremy Likness

9. A Tale of Three Browsers
It’s interesting to see how browser use has changed over the years.
In 2009, the most used browser to access my blog was Internet Explorer, followed by Firefox
with Chrome a distant third.
In 2011, Chrome began gaining momentum. Internet Explorer remained the top browser, but
Chrome was second and Firefox trailed as the third most used browser.
By 2014, Chrome had established a firm lead by a large margin, followed by Internet Explorer.
Firefox held onto the #3 spot.
2009: IE 47.32%, Firefox 35.79%, Chrome 12.06%.
2014: Chrome 58.63%, IE 16.42%, Firefox 15.24%.

10. 2013: Dead End
In 2013 I realized that my focus on Windows 8 was a dead end. Customers simply weren’t building Windows 8 apps and user
group attendance for Windows 8 talks dropped dramatically. Interest had shifted to cloud and web. Fortunately although I wrote
and blogged about Windows 8, my day job involved a massive project that leveraged TypeScript, JavaScript, and AngularJS.
Photo Copyright © 2014 Jeremy Likness

11. All Time Stats
I am passionate about learning and growth. That is not only one of
the core values at my current company, iVision, but has been a
driving factor behind my career. Not just my own learning and
growth, but empowering others to excel in this field. As I reflect on
several years of writing hundreds of blog posts I feel very blessed.
During its lifetime C#er : IMage blog has reached nearly half a
million unique visitors with over a million page views. Only 1/3 of
total traffic has been from the U.S., with the balance coming from
India, the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, France, Russia,
Australia, the Netherlands, Poland, and several other countries.
The top three keywords of all time driving traffic to my blog are
“MVVM,” “managed extensibility framework,” and my own name,
“Jeremy Likness.”
The top article on my blog, MVVM Explained, has been viewed
nearly 100,000 times.

12. 2014: HTML5, JavaScript, and Angular
2014 truly has been the year of Angular. I don’t believe it is a coincidence that Angular has grown in popularity given its key
features mirror those of Silverlight, namely data-binding and a clean separation of declarative presentation markup from
imperative code-based logic.
Photo Copyright © 2014 Jeremy Likness

13. 2014, 2015: Look Back, Move Forward
2014 was an exciting year. My blog began to grow again after the large hit related to the end of
Silverlight. Although “MVVM Explained” continued to be the number one viewed article along
with two other Windows 8 articles, AngularJS also made its way into the top 5. Popular articles
included The 10 Reasons Web Developers Should Learn AngularJS, my 5-part series The Top 5
Mistakes AngularJS Developers Make, and the article that ties Silverlight and AngularJS together,
Angular: The Modern HTML5 Answer to Silverlight’s MVVM.
Looking ahead to 2015 you can expect more of the same. I will continue to write about relevant
topics that I see in my daily consulting with businesses as they modernize their application
platforms and migrate to a mobile-first, cloud-ready platform using technologies like JavaScript
and Angular to expand their reach. I also hope to share more about emerging technologies like
Microsoft’s Appication Insights, cross-platform development with Apache Cordova, and take a
step back to explore higher level topics like Application Lifecycle Management. Of course, the
only reason the blog exists is for you to read it, so I welcome all suggestions and requests.

14. THANK YOU!
It is fun to take a look back at this blog over the years, but the most important fact is that it would not be possible without you. I
deeply appreciate all of you who take time out of their busy day to read these articles, share them with friends and associates,
post comments, provide feedback and contribute content of their own. I look forward to sharing more in 2015 and beyond!
http://CSharperImage.JeremyLikness.com