Hot Lava (a.k.a "How Bowers") plays baritone ukulele and sings with America's best tiki music band, 
2006 Tiki Talk Roundup
Saturday, December 31st, 2005As the end of the year approaches, I thought it might be fun to give you a peek into the inner workings of Tiki Talk. Since the first day, I’ve been using software that captures basic user information: how many visitors, where they come from, what they look at. Some of the data is interesting and some is very surprising.
Visitors
Tiki Talk launched on the eve of International Tiki Day, August 12. After an announcement in Tiki Central, the site got all of 5 unique visitors.
Four months later, as I type this, the site has had 3140 unique visitors. It averages about 70 visitors a day—probably 50 or so of you are coming daily to see what’s new. 10–12 are using the site’s RSS feed, the vast majority are still using browsers. Only 20% of the site’s traffic is from returning visitors.
Searches
That means that 80% are coming from search engines: Google being the most widely used. What are people looking for? Here’s the top 10, in order.
- Tiki Talk - I’m not sure if people are trying to find this site or a different one with information about the open source “tiki” content management system. They’ve got tikitalk.com and tikitalk.net but so far have done nothing with it.
- Trader Vics Chicago closing - The news has spread about the landmark tiki bar’s impending closure tonight, and the masses have been Googling in disbelief. Hopefully they get a nice crowd for the last hurrah.
- tiki bar tv - This comedy/bartending video podcast was in the right place at the right time. As one of the early adopters, Apple gave it a prominent spot when the iPod video was introduced.
- tiki blog - Apparently blogs have become mainstream enough that people expect that there’s one for every interest. In this case, they’d be correct.
- Josh Angle - Would a Shag by any other name smell as sweet? Oddly, Google’s #1 hit for “shag” is the artist’s website, but a bunch of people are looking for the hipster artist with his real name anyway.
- tiki kings poker chips - Poker is hot, and so is this product apparently. Although new, it actually has enough brand name recognition that people are asking for it by name.
- Kokomos Island Cafe - This modern tiki restaurant at the Mall of America gets searched for weekly. People must either not believe that it exits or that the food is any good. It does, and it is.
- Israel Kamakawiwo’ole’s Somewhere Over The Rainbow - Bruddah Iz’s enigmatic recording of this song is a topic I see searches for every week. Some people want mp3s, some people want tabs, but mostly everyone wants them for free.
- tiki drink costume - People were looking for something different this Halloween and quite a few got the idea to dress like a Mai Tai, as tiki culture slowly creeps into the mainstream.
- Enchanted Tiki Room - Walt’s first foray into audioanimatronics continues to please crowds, even after 42 years. The California original got a fantastic rehab, making everything like new inside and drastically improving the visibility outside. The park’s 50th anniversary also spawned a cache of incredible tiki room merchandise, including a reproduction of the host’s aloha shirt that sold out overnight. Here’s hoping its Orlando cousin gets a suitable makeover sometime soon.
Any suggestions for 2006?
Besides the almost daily blog, Tiki Talk added features this year like the calendar of events that appears on the site or can be subscribed to with applications like iCal and Thunderbird (it’s over there on the right).
Is there anything new you’d like to see in 2006? Reviews, a podcast, the ability to post comments?
Is there anything you’d like to change? Less frequent updates, different fonts, getting rid of the Firefox switch bar?
Send your ideas, comments, and not-so-subtle suggestions.
And please, keep sending suggestions for events and things to feature on the site. Currently, I only get one suggestion about every two weeks.
Have a great 2006! Thanks for visiting and keep coming back!
Looking for something to add a polynesian flair to your scrapbook or bail hearing invitation? 
Oh, how the hustle and bustle of daily life can grind on us. In this modern world, it’s getting tougher and tougher to keep up with appointments. I prefer to keep a small monkey wearing a fez on my shoulder clutching a Daytimer, but that’s not necessarily practical for everyone.
Design Toscano’s Gods of the Three Pleasures has been on my “must buy” list for over a year now, yet somehow I’ve still managed not to get it. And there it sits, beckoning to me from the SkyMall catalog, each time I fly.
Although there may be occasions when you must give up the relaxing environment of the tiki bar for a more refined and opulent setting, that doesn’t mean that you can’t bring a little bit of paradise with you.