March 2015 has been one of the two busiest months for Open Borders: The Case, tying closely with November 2014 for top spot. The highlight of the month was Open Borders Day, observed on March 16, and our publication of the Open Borders Manifesto on that day, which has received about 150 signatures so far.
Social media successes
The following pages and posts did best on social media:
- How my day in Wagah led me to rethink borders by an anonymous blogger, March 11, 2015, got 953 Facebook engagements and 6 Twitter engagements. The post, that used the border between India and Pakistan as a jumping point for rumination about borders. It received $10 worth of Facebook promotion (targeted at India and Pakistan), and much of its engagement came from Pakistan. This is the most engaged blog post on the site so far.
- The Open Borders Manifesto (site page) got 827 Facebook engagements and 309 Twitter engagements. This has been our most-engaged-with page on Twitter. It did not receive any paid promotion.
- The Open Borders Manifesto blog post, March 16, 2015, got 101 Facebook engagements and 31 Twitter engagements. It did not receive any paid promotion.
- Confusing public and private: the nonsensical private property argument against open borders by John Lee, March 31, 2015, got 51 Facebook engagements and 8 Twitter engagements.
- Three years of open borders, March 15, 2015, got 44 Facebook engagements and 13 Twitter engagements.
We also had some success with older posts. There was a surge of interest in the post Bangladesh and India: move towards open borders by Vipul Naik, January 15, 2015, after the publication of the anonymous post about the day in Wagah alluded to above. The Bangladesh-India post rose to 118 Facebook engagements from about 45 at the beginning of the month.
Substantive, highly appreciated posts
Sebastian Nickel’s blog post Overview of the Open Philanthropy Project’s work on migration liberalisation, published March 18, 2015, got 24 Facebook engagements and 7 Twitter engagements. It was based on a thorough review of the work on migration done by the Open Philanthropy Project, a joint initiative of GiveWell and Good Ventures.
Open Borders Day
We already did an Open Borders Day 2015 roundup post that lists reactions to Open Borders Day from around the web. In our review of traffic for the month, we discuss the surge of interest due to and during Open Borders Day.
Open Borders Action Group highlights
- Posts in the Open Borders Action Group that included drafts of the Open Borders Manifesto, and discussion of those drafts: Nathan Smith’s on 6 March 2015, John Lee’s on 6 March 2015, Nathan Smith’s on 9 March 2015, and John Lee’s on 14 March 2015.
- Post by John Lee linking to and quoting from the paper Efficiency gains from liberalizing labor mobility. 3 likes, 27 comments.
- Post by Nathan Smith linking to his Powerpoint slides The Case for Open Borders with Migration Taxes. 10 likes, 15 comments.
Site traffic: details
Pageviews for Open Border: The Case:
| Month and year | Pageview count (WordPress) | Pageview count (Google Analytics) |
|---|---|---|
| March 2015 | 38,289 | 36,826 |
| February 2015 | 26,205 | 25,351 |
| January 2015 | 28,149 | 25,702* |
| March 2014 | 22,808 | 23,329 |
| February 2014 | 14,964 | 15,409 |
| January 2014 | 17,521 | 17,709 |
*Google Analytics was dysfunctional for a few days and a few hours on other days, causing that number to be an underestimate.
Here is the WordPress traffic by day for the past few weeks:
Here is the Google Analytics traffic by day for the month:
