I reviewed my five most popular posts of 2015 to date to see what I could learn, as well as to easily recycle some old content!  (Ahh, the dog days of Summer!)

I learned a little about blogging and a lot about human nature.

The Top Five Posts

Here are the top five posts as well as my guesses as to why millions of you (okay, hundreds) decided to read them:

#1.  Travelport, Sabre and Finally Amadeus.  This post was about the Global Distribution Systems (GDS) which are the underpinning for online and offline travel agencies.  I attribute this post’s popularity to:

• the fact that these three companies only recently went public
• the fact that readers seem to like posts about public company valuations (as we shall see).
• the GDSs are large companies with many employees who read blogs.  It turns out people like to read about themselves or their own companies.

#2. Procure-to-Pay: Gartner Magic Quadrant for Suites.   This post added the market capitalization of each public company in Gartner’s Procure to Pay (P2P) Magic Quadrant.  I attribute the post’s popularity to:

• again, the presence of valuation information on public companies
• flagrant abuse of the ever-popular Gartner Magic Quadrant
• the fact many blog followers know me from Ariba, so they follow the procure-to-pay market
• P2P is still of interest to my readers who are in the investing community

#3.  What are Indirect Spend Suite Companies Worth? In this post, I compared the relative value of public P2P companies.  This post was popular for exactly the same reasons as #2.

#4.  If PayPal has a Mafia, Ariba has a Gang.  In this post, I named many (and skipped even more) of the impressive people I was blessed to work with at Ariba.  It turns out people like to read about themselves or their own companies.

#5. Sex Continues to Sell in Enterprise Software.  In this post, I decried the use of pictures of attractive young ladies by B2B lead development firms on LinkedIn.  (Of course, I also included sample photos.)  The popularity of this post is self-explanatory.  You should be ashamed of yourselves!

Summary

In the future:  less about me, more about you (and sex).