Inside LabourStart

• 531 people have already answered our survey on trade union use of the net, with the number rising all the time.  You can track the results in real time here.
• The Education International has agreed for us to close down the campaign we launched 3 months ago today.  It has gotten over 2,000 responses but has had little impact on the Colombian government.
• I’ll be attending NetRoots UK tomorrow – a major conference about activist (not specifically trade union) use of the new technology, hosted by the Trades Union Congress in London.
• I’ve been invited to speak in New Orleans in March at the annual conference of UALE, the labor educators organization.
• Our Global Solidarity Conference scheduled to take place in Sydney later this year is going to have to be postponed to 2012 or later; we’re currently exploring whether we can do a 2011 conference somewhere else.
• I’ve stopped podcasting; interest levels were far too low.
• UnionBook picked up more than 20 new members in the last 24 hours and is getting interesting publicity — a great article in Spanish from a Peruvian trade unionist which you can read on the site, plus I’ve been interviewed at length by a reporter from Hurriyet, Turkey’s largest newspaper.

Here are the totals with the changes since the end of last month in brackets:

Mailing lists – subscribers: 70,783 [+111]
LabourStart’s English language mailing list: 58,918 [-86]

N.B. As I was away from 12.12 through 31.12, the mailing lists have not been updated with participants from our most recent campaigns, nor those who voted in the Labour Photo of the Year competition. These additional numbers will be reflected at the end of January in next month’s report.

Unique visits to the site this month: 551,735 (-1,415)
Page views this month: 1,937,210 (+481,370)

Popular language home pages (last month in brackets):

* English 41,748 (47,870)
* Norwegian 6,768 (6,959)
* French 4,676 (4,583)
* Finnish 2,069 (2,456)
* Russian 1,605 (2,125)
* Polish 1.833 (1,838)
* Dutch 1,280 (1,414)
* Italian 843 (1,122)

UnionBook 2.0 – members: 2,805 [+322]
Facebook – members of LabourStart group: 3,930 [+43]
Twitter – followers: 2,790 [+103]
Correspondents: 828 [+3]
Union group on Flickr: 593 [+1]
LinkedIn – members of LabourStart group: 237 [no change]

Some highlights from the mailing lists — the other large groups are:

Norwegian 2,724 [-7]
French 2,348 [-1]
Spanish 1,267 [-1]
German 840 [+36]
Italian 529 [-2]
Russian 486 [no change]
Turkish 490 [+5]
Polish 302 [no change]
Portuguese 238 [no change]
Chinese 243 [no change]
Dutch 233 [+1]
Swedish 227 [-1]
Danish 159 [no change]

Here are the totals with the changes since the end of last month in brackets:

Mailing lists – subscribers: 70,672 [+628]
LabourStart’s English language mailing list: 59,004  [+353]

Unique visits to the site this month: 553,150 (-5,254)
Page views this month: 1,455,840 (+37,612)

Popular language home pages (new this month):

• English 47,870
• Norwegian 6,959
• French 4,583
• Finnish 2,456
• Russian 2,125
• Polish 1,838
• Dutch 1,414
• Italian 1,122

UnionBook 2.0 – members: 2,483 [+401]
Facebook – members of LabourStart group: 3,887  [+73]
Twitter – followers: 2,687 [+81]
Correspondents: 825 [+10]
Union group on Flickr: 592 [+9]
LinkedIn – members of LabourStart group: 237 [+35]

Some highlights from the mailing lists — the other large groups are:

Norwegian 2,731 [+6]
French 2,349 [+83]
Spanish 1,268 [+9]
German 804 [+1]
Italian 531 [+9]
Russian 486 [+8]
Turkish 485 [+10]
Polish 302 [-2]
Portuguese 238 [+1]
Chinese 243 [+7]
Dutch 232 [no change]
Swedish 228 [-1]
Danish 159 [-2]

I’ve blogged about this just now on UnionBook — I think it should make it even easier to recruit new members.

Here are the totals with the changes since the end of last month in brackets:

Mailing lists – subscribers: 70,044 [+1,350]
LabourStart’s English language mailing list: 58,651 [+740]

Unique visits to the site this month: 558,404
Page views this month: 1,418,228

UnionBook 2.0 – members: 2,082 [+290]
Facebook – members of LabourStart group: 3,814 [+145]
Twitter – followers: 2,606 [+80]
Correspondents: 815 [+3]
Union group on Flickr: 583 [+9]
LinkedIn – members of LabourStart group: 202 [+1]

Some highlights from the mailing lists — the other large groups are:

Norwegian 2,725 [+9]
French 2,266 [+98]
Spanish 1,259 [+48]
German 803 [+2]
Italian 522 [+4]
Russian 478 [+33]
Turkish 475 [+22]
Polish 304 [-1]
Portuguese 237 [-1]
Chinese 236 [+53]
Dutch 232 [-1]
Swedish 229 [-1]
Danish 161 [-1]

I haven’t been able to update this blog for some 4 weeks and lots has happened in that time. Here are some highlights:

New campaigns: We launched three new campaigns – India: Over 500 workers jailed in dispute with Foxconn (4,036 messages sent so far), Thailand: Migrant workers have the right to workers’ compensation (1,703 messages), and Colombia: Free jailed university lecturer and trade unionist (1,707 messages). We’ve closed down one campaign last Friday — PSI’s campaign in support of jailed workers in Turkey.

LabourStart.tv: The domain registrar closed our account in late September — we’re now making efforts to get it reopened. Meanwhile, I’ve changed the link on our front page to point to http://www.labourstart.org/tv which works.

Labour and Technology podcasts: I’ve done two of these in the last month – Spammers and online communities: The challenge for trade unions (50 listeners) and Activist apps (258 listeners).

Labour photo of the year: Derek and I have agreed to begin work on this in another couple of weeks.

UnionBook: The old site has been completely shut down and unionbook.org and unionbook.org.uk now both point to the new site.

Upcoming conferences: I have been invited to speak at a conference of the International Metalworkers Federation in Geneva next week — it’s called “IMF global trade union networks in TNC’s as a tool to organising and promoting solidarity”. I’ve also been invited to Istanbul to speak at a conference on trade unions new media on 27 November.

2011 LabourStart global solidarity conference: Andrew has made some progress on this and we’ll be talking about it and beginning planning within the next few days.

Labour’s online bookstore: We’re ready to use the new version of UCS’s software, and this should be live in a day or two. We continue to promote about one book per month.  Authors and publishers continue to contact us regularly asking us to promote books.

We’ve shown the ad ‘Facebook is for scabs’ 1,416,224 times in the last week at a cost to us of $379.61.  446 people have clicked through to visit UnionBook as a result.  In the last 10 days, 254 people have signed up to join UnionBook, which now has 1,614 members.  (At the current rate, we’ll reach 2,000 members in another two weeks.) I intend to continue running the ad for a few more days at least.

I wonder how long they’re going to let this one run …

We’re getting ready to shut down the old UnionBook and replace it with the new one.  In anticipation of this, I ran a survey — and will publish full results later this week.  But the headline is this: 427 people have responded so far.  An overwhelming majority – 83% – want to continue with the new, Ning-based version of UnionBook.  Only 7% would want to go back to the old, Elgg-based version.

My weekly podcast this week is about ‘software design and proletarian internationalism’ and is all about our experience using Ning.  Listen to it here.