From: torvalds@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Linus Torvalds)
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux
Subject: Readership report..
Summary: sept-92 readership
Date: 2 Oct 92 10:34:35 GMT
Organization: University of Helsinki

In case somebody doesn't follow news.lists, here are selected parts of
the september-92 readership reports.  In case you want the full report,
it's available in news.list along with some other general news-related
reports. 

Interestingly, comp.os.linux propagation has gone up from just 56% to
71% within the last month.  At the same time, the estimated total number
of readers figures have become smaller by a noticeable amount - but not
just for linux.  There have probably been some changes to the way the
readership is counted.

For those that think linux is an active group: you are right.  We aren't
far behind alt.sex (THE newsgroup when it comes to popularity - although
some other groups do have a bigger audience) in number of articles, and
linux has been in the top 40 in both traffic volume and cost-per-reader
for the last few months. 

As to actual popularity: propagation is still pretty low (80% is normal
for a comp group it seems), but being the 335th most popular group isn't
bad for this kind of specialized group.

		Linus

--- edited list follows ---

This is the full set of data from the USENET readership report for Sep 92.
Explanations of the figures are in a companion posting.

        +-- Estimated total number of people who read the group, worldwide.
        |     +-- Actual number of readers in sampled population
        |     |     +-- Propagation: how many sites receive this group at all
        |     |     |      +-- Recent traffic (messages per month)
        |     |     |      |      +-- Recent traffic (kilobytes per month)
        |     |     |      |      |      +-- Crossposting percentage
        |     |     |      |      |      |    +-- Cost ratio: $US/month/rdr
        |     |     |      |      |      |    |      +-- Share: % of newsrders
        |     |     |      |      |      |    |      |   who read this group.
        V     V     V      V      V      V    V      V
   1 160000  5317   83%   980  1933.6    22%  0.02  11.5%  misc.jobs.offered 
   2 160000  5142   82%  1568  1909.7    40%  0.02  11.1%  misc.forsale 
   3 150000  4788   89%    10   157.9   100%  0.00  10.3%  news.announce.newusers 
   4 120000  3910   68%  2556  6290.4    45%  0.07   8.4%  alt.sex 
...
  20  68000  2241   86%  1120  2335.9    15%  0.06   4.8%  comp.lang.c 
...
  69  44000  1448   85%   945  1622.4    15%  0.06   3.1%  comp.unix.sysv386 
...
 119  36000  1186   76%  1381  3445.7     2%  0.14   2.6%  comp.unix.bsd 
...
 128  35000  1140   85%   534   902.9    11%  0.04   2.5%  comp.unix.ultrix 
...
 262  25000   830   81%    10    11.1    10%  0.00   1.8%  comp.os.misc 
...
 335  22000   733   71%  2392  4082.2     2%  0.26   1.6%  comp.os.linux 
...
 365  21000   705   83%   139   327.0     5%  0.03   1.5%  comp.os.minix 
...
 606  15000   498   76%   688   988.4     0%  0.10   1.1%  comp.os.coherent 
...
 892  10000   345   79%     4     5.5    25%  0.00   0.7%  comp.unix.sysv286 
..
1577   1500    48    9%    24    31.7     0%  0.00   0.1%  houston.eats