It’s the 10th anniversary of Brothers-Brick.com! [News]

In 2015 we marked the 10th birthday of The Brothers Brick, and today marks 10 years since we launched the Brothers-Brick.com domain. I promised we were making some changes here at TBB, and I highlighted a few of the changes in our 11th birthday post six months ago.

TBB10

But rather than focusing on the improvements we’ve been making — not least of which are several new contributors who just joined yesterday and the server migration that will be complete by the end of the year — I wanted to go back to something I’d shared with our readers in years past.

Brace yourselves for website analytics! Oh wait, that’s not very interesting. Ahem. It’s all about you, our readers!

(There will still be charts and graphs. And numbers. Maybe just a little bit of metadata. Mmmm, metadata…)

There are a lot of TBB readers in the world!

2.3 million people have visited Brothers-Brick.com so far in 2016 (300,000 unique people each month), and there are nearly 100,000 of you who’ve liked our Facebook page, making TBB the most popular LEGO fan page on Facebook. The improvements we’ve made over this past year seem to be having a positive effect, finding new readers in every corner of the web, from Facebook and Twitter to our biggest audience — almost a million unique people a month — on Pinterest.

2016 TBB stats

Comparing where we are today with where we ended 2015, monthly site visitors are up 65%, Facebook fans are up 800%, Twitter followers are up 61%, and our 6,000 followers on Pinterest represent an increase of … INFINITY!!! (since our presence there is new since 2015).

TBB readers are everywhere!

I normally share a map of the world with lots of countries colored in, but instead, here’s a list of the countries where there are no TBB readers:

  • Western Sahara
  • North Korea

Yup, that’s it, so here’s a shout-out to our readers in South Sudan, Timor-Leste, and Kosovo! And of course, a special summer greeting to the LEGO builders at the South Pole — our Christmas present is on its way!

LEGO Builders at the South Pole

The diversity of our readership is reflected in where our contributors are from, with TBB staff from Canada, the Netherlands, Mexico, New Zealand, Scotland, Singapore, Slovenia, South Africa, Russia, the UK, and the United States.

Enough chit-chat — more stats, stat!

Top 10 Countries Top 10 Cities
  1. United States
  2. United Kingdom
  3. Canada
  4. Germany
  5. Australia
  6. France
  7. Netherlands
  8. Italy
  9. Poland
  10. Singapore
  1. London
  2. Melbourne
  3. New York
  4. Paris
  5. Sydney
  6. Hong Kong
  7. Chicago
  8. Los Angeles
  9. Toronto
  10. Seattle

It’s quite fascinating that Brisbane and Perth help round out the top 15 cities, so LEGO fandom is quite strong in Australia. We love our readers down under so much that one of our new contributors is from New Zealand.

Where to next?

We’re running out of places on Earth with potential new readers, so we’re hoping our new server will have the capability to beam TBB posts directly into space, chasing after the trio of minifigs on the Jupiter Juno spacecraft. Hey, ISS Expedition 50 crew: If you’re reading this from the International Space Station, we’d love to know! By our 30th anniversary in 2035, we hope there’ll be LEGO fans reading TBB on Mars.

Our deepest desire is that you’ve enjoyed reading TBB on Brothers-Brick.com over the past 10 years, and that we’ve inspired you to think more creatively, to build with your kids, to join a LUG, or even start your own LEGO blog.

Here’s to the next 10 years of Brothers-Brick.com. Thanks for reading, and build on!