Happy New Year from PlayStation.Blog!

I wanted to use the last post of 2010 to take a quick look back and talk a bit about what we’re working on for early next year.

2010 has been a year of tremendous growth for the PlayStation Social Media program – average weekly page views have nearly doubled (to about 2 million), our Twitter followship has multiplied by a factor of more than 5 (to about 573K), and – this is the crazy one – Facebook fans have multiplied by over 10x (to 7.6 million). In a not-unrelated development, we added Sid and Rey to our team which have enabled us to be more responsive via those channels, place our videos on the front pages of IGN and Gametrailers, as well as publish roughly 10 extra stories per week. We were also named a Top 5 entertainment blog by Technorati, which tracks such things.

I’m also particularly proud of our PlayStation.Blog Share feature, which launched last Spring. Many tens of thousands you have participated, and more than 50 ideas have been enacted to date. While the Social Media team can’t take credit for those (we don’t actually make these things happen), you should know that having all your ideas in one place has made it much easier for people throughout the company to know what you’re thinking. I’ve actually sat in on meetings where ideas submitted to share were pored over, one at a time. That’s the whole point, right?

So, enough patting ourselves on the back – here’s what we’re working on for the first few months of this year:

A full, from-the-ground-up redesign: We’ve been tracking which Blog features are most important to you (you’re voting with your clicks). We’ve taken that data and are pretty far along with a redesign that prioritizes big news, PlayStation Store content and older stories while vastly improving search, and making it easier for you to participate and share stories that are important to you with others. Also: it’s way nicer looking, as we’re sick of being the Euro Blog‘s less-attractive cousin. Look for this to roll out by Mid-March.

More unique stories: In 2011 we’ll be bringing you more PlayStation posts you won’t find elsewhere, in addition to the usual reams of daily news. Sid’s putting the finishing touches on a multi-part “Monsters of PlayStation” feature as we speak.

Coming to you: We haven’t locked anything in yet, but I’m eyeing some Blog meet-ups in places that we haven’t been to much, especially in the South and East. More details soon, but the first 3 months of the year should see us in a variety of places.

That long-promised podcast: By end of March. At the latest. We’re taking suggestions on names, btw.

Thanks to all of you who have read, voted, commented, subscribed, followed, attended live, or otherwise participated in what we do. We look forward to serving you in 2011.

-Jeff

PS – I was looking for New Year’s Ball Drop pics for this post when I found this. May God have mercy on us all.