Heyyo Poptropicans, it’s Ultimate iPad Expert here with the 2017 PHB Readers’ Survey results and analysis!
It’s been a little while of a wait since the initial survey, but the results are all here and ready for your viewing. Over the week of the survey, we received 157 survey responses which helped to tally up what we think is a fairly accurate representation of our more active PHB readers.
Once everything got tallied up, I went in and created charts using Google Sheets, which allows them to be interactive. You can hover over different sections to see more details about a specific group in the charts, like to see how many people chose that option and what the percentage is.
There are also a couple of maps that show the global and domestic spread of the PHB’s reach. Note: If the maps don’t load for some reason, try refreshing the page.
Anyway, let’s get into the results!
Did you participate in the 2014 Survey?
Looking back three years now, the PHB held a survey in 2014 even before I joined the PHB. A fairly straightforward question we asked this time was: How many people took both this survey and the one in 2014?
We can see here from this chart that only about 15% of this year’s survey takers also took the 2014 survey. This is only slightly different from last year’s result, where only 18.5% had taken the 2014 survey.
Did you participate in the 2016 Survey?
Moving on to a similar question as the last. Here we were curious to find out how many people who took last year’s survey were back again to take this one.
About 38% of of this year’s respondents are return survey-takers, as you can see. Quite an increase from the 2014 question, but a large majority of this year’s survey-takers didn’t even take last year’s, which I find to be somewhat surprising. It seems quite a few newer readers have become more involved this year.
What is your gender?
Another simple question: we asked survey-takers to tell us their gender.
As wee can see from this gender makeup, the male to female ratio is about 1:2, although there is a larger percentage of boys this year than last year’s survey-takers. This difference is only about 3%, but still an interesting trend to note.
What is your age?
The age of those surveyed seems to easily be dominated by the 9-17 range, which (adding the three groups it consists of) gives it a whopping 87.1% majority. This, of course, makes sense, considering Poptropica’s general age range.
Something interesting to note is that both the 9 to 11 and 12 to 14 ranges have shrunk since last year’s survey, while the 15 to 17 and 18 to 21 ranges have definitely grown. Perhaps some of us who began playing when we were younger have stuck around to grow older with the community.
What country do you live in?
Here we have what is in my opinion one of the more fascinating questions of the survey: the international makeup of the PHB reader base.
Let’s take a look at the map. The more survey participants in that country, the darker the shade of red it appears on this map. Similarly, the lighter the red, the fewer survey participants from that country. And if the country shows as gray, then no survey participants were from that country.
What we can see clearly is that the US dominates here, which is not entirely surprising considering the blog is written in English, and the US has the largest English-speaking population in the world. Below is a chart which excludes the US, for the sake of comparison:
Here also are two pie charts to show the country makeup:
Exactly in line with last year’s result, a whopping 71.5% of responders are from the United States.
After the US, this year’s runner-ups are Australia (with 5.7% overall, 20% excluding Americans), Canada (with 4.4% overall, 15.6% excluding Americans), and Singapore (with the same 4.4% overall, 15.6% excluding Americans).
This is followed by the UK, India, the Philippines, Oman, Hong Kong, and Malaysia, all with just two survey-takers from each. Still, this represents quite a widespread group of readers from all different corners of the globe.
If you live in the US, which state or territory do you live in?
This one is similar to the last question, but here we’re looking at which territories that 71.5% of Americans is spread out to be in.
Just like last year, the more populous states have higher percentages. The top 5 are California (15%), Florida (8.4%), Texas (6.5%), Illinois (5.6%), and North Carolina (5.6%), all of which are in the top 10 most populous states of the US.
When did you first find Poptropica?
Now we’ll take a look at the questions relating to the game itself. Here we ask which year you guys started playing Poptropica.
Just like last year, the most pop-ular year is 2010. Overall, however, it seems that most people joined Poptropica in the earlier years, which is much less split than it was in last year’s survey results. Quite different from last year is the result for 2011 (which was the year I joined).
How often do you play Poptropica?
As we see from this question, it seems that most people play Poptropica more in the center categories. The most populous category is that of a few times a week with 19.1% of responders, the same category had 18.8% last year, so quite similar.
Fairly split otherwise, however, over the different time frames, but definitely seems that the results are congragating somewhere in the center.
Are you a member on Poptropica?
When it comes to membership, it seems that the results are not so split. Only 20.4% of participants have memberships currently. On the flip side, 79.6% are not currently members, with 51% of that group not having ever had a membership.
Things are slightly on the up from last year, however. A higher percentage has membership this year, although it’s only by a little bit.
When did you first find the PHB?
And now for the PHB-related questions. Here, we ask when you guys first found the PHB.
The bar graph for this one is quite interesting to me. It almost looks like a checkmark shape. What we see here is a fairly decent number to start, then a decline towards 2010, and then a rise each year beyond that (except for 2017, which is still at its beginning).
The years 2015 (23.6%) and 2016 (27.4%) make up over 50% of the overall tally, which is really quite interesting to me. Looks like growth for the PHB viewership, and perhaps even more older players starting to move on to other things.
How did you find the PHB?
Next we asked how you guys found the PHB.
Just like last year, an overwhelming percentage found the PHB via web searching, although this percentage is down 9.5% from last year’s results (82.1% to 72.6%). A larger number of you guys have also found us through new avenues, with the second-most popular answer being referred to us by a friend, sibling, or someone in your life.
How often do you visit the PHB?
For this next question, we wanted to know about how frequently you visit the PHB.
There is change from last year’s results, and it seems readers are less commonly reading up on the PHB. The most popular of the categories is not the most frequent choice, “several times a day,” as it was last year. This year, the most popular is once a day, at 19.1%.
This year, it looks like the differences between each category are quite gradual. Overall, it seems people aren’t on the PHB as frequently, and my guess is this could be because of the lower amount of news from the Poptropica Creators.
What types of PHB blog posts do you read frequently?
Here we have a little insight as to what you, the readers, spend your time reading up on.
Similar to last year, the two top categories of posts are News with 105 responders and Blog Updates with 90 responders. Definitely makes sense that you would mostly be coming here to get the latest Pop news, since that’s the main focus of our blog posts!
I also very much appreciated that many of you chose PMFM as one of your choices and am glad my hours of editing meme faces paid off to you all in the end. 😀
How likely is it that you would recommend the PHB to a friend or a colleague?
Now we ask you to rate the PHB out of 10 for how much you’d recommend us. Over half of you guys suggested an 8, 9, or 10 as your choice, showing that you guys consider the blog pretty highly. It means a lot!
10 is the most chosen response, being more than double of the next largest, 7.
What portions of the PHB/PHN do you regularly browse?
Unlike last year’s survey, the top two choices actually switched around for this year. News and sneak peeks became the most popular category, winning over Island Walkthroughs, which was #1 last year.
Other than that change, not a whole lot difference is in the comparison between categories, aside from the fact that our chat hangout, the Poptropica Help Chat (PHC), appears to have gained more activity since last year.
What other Poptropica blogs or Poptropica-related sties do you frequently visit?
And now onto our final quantifiable question… we asked you guys about your favorite Poptropica sites outside of the PHB that you visit frequently.
Similar to last year, the most popular choice was the Creators’ Blog which received a whopping 101 participants’ choosing. The next three choices were Thinknoodles (with 65), Tall Cactus’s Poptropica Blog (with 43), and our very own Perfect Sky’s YouTube channel (with 39).
All the other choices had quite a differing range, but all got their fair share of around 20 or so votes. Many of them are also part of the Poptropica Bloggers’ Network.
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Well, this concludes this year’s survey analysis! Nice job on making your way through this long post, and I hope you enjoyed it.
Last year, I made a “Part 2,” where I went over questions and comments from the survey. If you guys want it, I’ll do it again for this year.
Be sure to comment your thoughts below. And I hope you’ll join us next year for the 2018 survey!
Meme King out. 
• Ultimate iPad Expert •
🦄 Ponytropica 🦄 