How Coronavirus Has Changed JetPunk's Demographics

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The events of 2020 so far have changed the lifestyle of everyone. Due to global lockdowns, more people are being told to work from home and thus more people have access to JetPunk! In this surprising change of events, the demographics of JetPunk's users has changed quite drastically over the last few months.

Note: This article is not for politics or discussion on the virus itself, but simply its effects on JetPunk.

Also, before reading the rest of the blog, perhaps you'd like to try guessing the top 15 of 2019 on this quiz: Countries with the Most JetPunk Users

Historical Demographics

First, we shall take a look at the demographics of the last few years to try and see the "normal" and how JetPunk has already changed over time. Below you can see the top countries for 2016-2019, in terms of % of users on the site from that country.

2016201720182019
43.0%United States 44.0%United States 39.5%United States 35.2%United States
17.5%United Kingdom 16.5%United Kingdom 18.1%United Kingdom 19.0%United Kingdom
5.8%France 5.2%Canada 4.9%Canada 5.2%France
5.4%Canada 4.1%Australia 4.5%France 4.6%Canada
4.0%Australia 3.8%France 4.2%Australia 4.3%Australia
2.0%India 2.5%India 2.7%India 3.2%Poland

As you can see from this, United States has always been top. Though what is noticeable is the drop in % in the last few years, whereby repping almost a third of the users instead of nearly half. With the UK, Canada and Australia all consistently in the top 5, it seems clear that the Anglosphere uses JetPunk more than any other. This, of course, makes absolute sense given the majority of the website is indeed in English.

What is noticeable though, is how in 2019 India dropped off the top 6, being replaced by Poland. This was due to the "Polish boom" which happened in 2019 thanks to a mid-size Polish YouTuber playing JetPunk. Many of you would've noticed this if you were here around April 2019. But overall, these results are perhaps telling that JetPunk is reaching a wider audience outside English.

2020 Begins Normally

In January of 2020, we had the following top 6.

January 2020
33.6%United States
18.1%United Kingdom
7.8%Poland
4.8%Canada
4.5%France
3.2%Australia

Clearly, 2020 started off in a fairly normal fashion. The top 6 contained the same countries as 2019, with a change of ranks. Poland's domination continues thanks to another boost "Polish boom #2" starting in December 2019, leading to a massive influx of new users from there. But overall, January felt like a normal start for the most part. The Anglosphere dominated, with a slight tendency towards non-English gradually increasing its presence.

March 2020: Global Lockdowns

As you will surely know, many countries across the world began locking down in March 2020 due to Covid-19. It started with border closures, then came "Stay-at-Home" orders, and now much of the world we thought we knew has drastically changed. Everybody who's able to work from home, is now doing so. School's and Universities have moved to online learning in an attempt to socially distance students. Both of these have a massive effect on who has access to JetPunk and when.

Most users may have noticed that weekdays are often the busiest here on JetPunk, and this ties in with the fact school and workplaces are much busier on weekdays too. However, with lockdowns pursuing, the disparity between weekdays and weekends has massively dropped. With less fixation on timetables at home than at work, people are using JetPunk all days of the week, not only as a procrastination tool.

Now comes to the data. What should we expect? Well if everybody is staying home, then surely not much will have changed? Right? Wrong! The results have caused a major shift in traffic...

March 2020
27.4%United States
21.3%United Kingdom
6.7%Poland
5.2%India
4.3%France
4.2%Canada

So what's happened? Well, the actual number of users from the United States, is largely unchanged. But what has changed is the number of users in Europe and India. The United Kingdom has blasted ahead, repping a much larger percentage of the traffic than it ever has done in the past. Poland is still going strong in 3rd place. India now joins the leagues again, with traffic from India increasing by over 4x the week after the lockdown happened there compared to the week before.

This global shift to online working has brought more traffic to JetPunk than ever before, and it's clear that certain countries have developed a thirst for JetPunk more than others

April 2020

As of writing this (April 29th), here's the current stats for April 2020:

April 2020
36.0%United Kingdom
19.3%United States
4.5%Poland
4.4%France
4.3%India
3.7%Australia

This is where we see major changes. Compared to March, traffic from the United States is still flat and seem unchanged with the stay-at-home orders in place in many states. However, traffic from the UK has doubled from March. That's right, it's not a mistake, more than a third of users on JetPunk right now are Brits, almost double the current number of Americans. It seems us Brits can't get enough quizzing now that pubs and shops are closed, so we've resorted to exploring JetPunk instead.

I suspect, after all this has finished, that the U.S. will eventually regain its crown atop the JetPunk users. However, for now at least, the U.K. will remain victorious among the JetPunkers of the world. Perhaps maybe many of them will stay with JetPunk after this is all over.

Conclusion

The virus has changed the way we live in drastic ways. So much so that JetPunk is no longer dominated by Americans, and it's in fact the British who have conquered JetPunk, repping over a third of all users in April 2020.

What do you think might happen in the future? Should we all start making "Top 10 U.K. Counties" quizzes instead of "Top 10 U.S. States"? Perhaps more quizzes on Poland should be created to compensate for the influx of users from there.

Source: Google Analytics, Jan 1st 2016 - Apr 29th 2020

+25
Level ∞
Apr 29, 2020
How strange. Looking at the data further it would appear that we still get (slightly) more US traffic than UK traffic.

We get more UK visitors but they view far fewer pages on average.

The simplest explanation is that we seem to be getting more search traffic from the UK. Perhaps this is a change in Google's algorithm. Or maybe someone is buying ads on Google to siphon off our traffic, but only for the lucrative US market. Or maybe British people are just searching for quizzes.

It's hard to tease apart since a large chunk of our traffic comes from people going to Google, searching for JetPunk, and then clicking the link.

Of course, what I really care about in my greedy little heart is revenue, in which the US still beats the UK by a good margin. And, unfortunately, Indian traffic doesn't even pay for its own bandwidth.

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Level 56
Apr 29, 2020
Great! Loved to see more Indians joining JP. I've even noticed that in the past days, from Recent User Created, I've seen many Indian making their first quiz. I was wondered why I am seeing so many Indians these days. Now, I have the answer.
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Level 56
Apr 29, 2020
Btw, I would like to know that who is the polish youtuber.
+7
Level 68
Apr 29, 2020
Kolega Strategacy was the guy
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Level 56
Apr 29, 2020
Thanks
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Level 55
Apr 29, 2020
Proud to be British!
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Level 62
May 3, 2020
It must feel good. I'm not exactly British, but only part of the Commonwealth.
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Level 43
Sep 20, 2020
Indeed
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Level 88
Apr 29, 2020
Very interesting, thanks for this!

I enjoy the "top 10 U.S. States" quizzes and the like, but I'd be happy to see more quizzes focusing on the UK, India, Poland, and so on. I probably won't do very well on them at first, but I would learn new things and that's part of the fun.

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Level 60
Apr 29, 2020
I'm telling Ashish Chanchalani about Jetpunk.

Btw, just wanted to know that if I use Jetpunk multiple times a day does that count only once or multiple times?

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Level 56
Apr 29, 2020
Go and tell him! JetPunk will see a larger boom from India. We might have more users than UK or USA.
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Level 56
Apr 29, 2020
How strange. I came across Jetpunk (here in Britain) off a "things to do while you're stuck at home" section on a lockdown newsletter. I wonder as well if it's because lockdown is being quite widely observed in Britain but isn't even in force at all in many US states - as far as I know?

I have done my bit and stuck a British - well, English - interest quiz on here: https://www.jetpunk.com/user-quizzes/1308368/saxon-and-viking-kings-of-england

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Level 51
Apr 29, 2020
The Dutch are still lacking >:( come on guys KOLONISEER!
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Level 76
Oct 7, 2020
As indonesian myself im right behind your back rn
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Level 68
Apr 29, 2020
Interesting. I wonder if it has to do with the fact that many states in the US have much looser stay-at-home guidelines than anywhere in Europe.
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Level 75
Apr 29, 2020
Super facinating! I think it might also be interesting to have data about total numbers of users, not just having them as a %.
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Level 75
Apr 29, 2020
..... and because of this post I have now begun an English county quiz making marathon
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Level 68
Apr 29, 2020
What happened to Canadian stats? There's no way we lost 0.5% of Canadian users between March and April.
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Level 68
Apr 29, 2020
You didn't necessarily lose users, but due to more users being on the site than before, you simply didn't increase as much as other countries.
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Level 72
Apr 29, 2020
It's possible that their total number remained unchanged, but the influx of users from other countries skewed the percentages.

E.g.: If you have 1 000 Canadian users and 100 000 total users, you'd have 1% Canadians. But if the total goes to 200 000 total users and none of them is Canadian, you'd have only 0.5% of jetpunkers from Canada without "losing" any visitors.

P.S. I'm aware that the real numbers are much bigger, but I think it's easier to understand the logic without too many zeros.

P.P.S. Stewart, we've written simultaneously. :)

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Level 68
Apr 29, 2020
That does make sense. Now, I'm quite interested in how the British users really increased. Seems strange how the traffic of the United States slowed down a bit, while the British traffic just exploded. I'm amazed at how many Jetpunkers from the UK started to get interested in the site between March and April. Can't wait for the May stats.
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Level 77
Apr 30, 2020
It is great. This is one of the few opportunities on Jetpunk that 🇬🇧 beats 🇺🇸
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Level 77
Apr 30, 2020
No wonder my cricket quizzes seem to be getting more takes these days with more Indians and more English on the site.
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Level 44
Apr 30, 2020
Seems like us Brits are taking our pub quiz tradition online at the mo :) There is a big boom in all kinds of puzzles here right now actually, I wonder if it’s a part of that?
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Level ∞
Apr 30, 2020
According to Stewart we are getting large amount of traffic timed to TV quiz shows in the UK. A lot of people are searching for trivia answers and ending up on JetPunk. Unfortunately for us, most of them don't seem to stick around.
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Level 55
Apr 30, 2020
Oh no! Is Jeppy the Fish sick?
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Level 74
Apr 30, 2020
At the moment, he is placed in Aquarantine :(
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Level 69
Apr 30, 2020
Very interesting. More quizzes on the UK counties would definitely be welcomed ;)
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Level 64
Apr 30, 2020
I wonder how many Jetpunk users there are in total?
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Level ∞
May 1, 2020
It depends on what you mean by "users".

  • 1.5 million unique visitors per month (although this double-counts people using multiple devices)

  • About 175,000 registered accounts

  • Of whom about 40,000 have logged in during the last month
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Level 84
Apr 30, 2020
Great stuff, Stewart! I remember chatting with you about this kind of thing months ago. I'll be very curious to see where the trends go from here.
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Level 61
Apr 30, 2020
We're used to our weekly pub quizzes. Without them we've moved online, doing quizzes with friends over zoom. I expect people have been pinching questions from Jetpunk.
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Level 78
May 1, 2020
NorthWest Motorway Police here in the UK have recently been displaying Jetpunk Logo quizzes on their Facebook page for people to guess at. They weren't unfortunately giving link credit to the site though. I did leave a few comments posting a link, so perhaps that helped slightly.

Heres Their Post

+1
Level ∞
May 1, 2020
Thanks for posting a link!
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Level 77
May 3, 2020
What does the language breakdown look like these days? Is Polish 2nd now after English?
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Level 68
May 3, 2020
Here's the stats for April. This is combining all variations together, e.g. en-gb and en-us are combined, as well as de-de and de-ch (German in Germany and Switzerland), etc...

April 2020
78.7%English
5.2%French
4.4%Polish
2.5%Spanish
1.9%German
1.2%Portuguese

As you can see, pretty much as expected. Also of note, during lockdown daily French takes have almost doubled, so it makes sense that that is currently repping a higher % than Polish, especially when you add that French is spoken in Canada, Belgium and Switzerland too. That's mostly why Spanish is above German, despite being lower in daily takes, because Spanish has contributions from Latin America and USA too.

Finally, note that again this is users, so they may be skewed.

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Level 77
May 4, 2020
Thanks mate - that is interesting.
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Level 58
May 4, 2020
As a Polish guy I'm very happy to see there's a lot of us here, as it is a great website. I really should be thinking about sending a donation finally.

However, I never heard of anyone but me using it, never heard about this youtuber playing it etc. I don't even remember when I registered (I was doing some quizzes before that), but it was long before the boom.

When it comes to the quizzes in Polish, I rarely take them - I got used to the English versions.

Question to the admins - as the majority of the promoted quizzes are USA-oriented (well, duh) - what are the chances of a quiz about Poland to be promoted if I create one (of course I'm looking for a broad answer, preety much just acknowledging that the "problem" is noticed)? For a long time I have some ideas how to make a series about Polish history, aimed towards an international user. But, to be fair, I don't have a lot of motivation to do it seeing what ends up with points etc.

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Level 63
May 6, 2020
Being Canadian, I'm a little upset that we got kicked off the top 5... even the top 6!
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Level 56
May 11, 2020
Very interesting post! Also, us Americans need to reclaim the site.
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Level 43
May 11, 2020
And the brazilians?
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Level 47
Jun 1, 2020
Interesting observations!

Although I'm not British, I *am* currently resident in England. My JetPunk account is a few years old, but I'd been letting it sit mostly idle over the last year or so. I drifted back onto the site during lockdown while stuck at home, as you posit so many UKers have done. So I suppose I've contibuted very slightly to the rise in UK traffic you've detected.

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Level 39
Jun 4, 2020
My personal suspicion is that the reason the UK has overtaken the US recently could be that the UK lockdown has been much stricter and lasted longer than the one in the US, probably driving a larger proportion of us online for entertainment.
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Level 76
Sep 23, 2020
I would be careful with estimations. Your claim that the US started "repping almost a third of the users instead of nearly half," from 2016 to 2019 is quite hyperbolic. It makes the 7.8% change sound as though it's closer to ~16.67% which is more than double the actual change.
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Level 66
Nov 6, 2020
Any interesting changes for the rest of 2020 so far?
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Level 68
Nov 6, 2020
Indeed there is! Brits have fizzled down but still above 2019 levels, France is now soaring again after lockdown 2.0 started there as well. I'm planning a "year in review" for JetPunk 2020, and it'll mention some of this as well.
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Level 84
Nov 6, 2020
Looking forward to the year in review!
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Level 49
Nov 15, 2020
hello from germany, i joined during the lockdown too
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Level 88
Dec 27, 2020
That would explain the relatively new Polish language Jetpunk I've had fun trying to decipher. I'd love to try a Russian version to brush up on my Cyrillic and very lean understanding of the language. I'm obviously in no position to create it however.
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Level 55
Feb 26, 2021
Russian is now a language on JetPunk!
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Level 19
May 6, 2022
That's great! I am very curious if any demographics are available on age range ratios of Jetpunk members. If not I would welcome your best guess Stewart. That might enable my future quiz postings to be more relevant to a greater number of participants.
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Level 68
May 6, 2022
We don't have numbers for that, but we see that many users seem to be school / college age, as well as office workers since we trend with when schools / offices are open quite well.

Overall I don't think there's enough of a bias to justify tailoring quizzes as such :)

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Level 43
Mar 20, 2023
Americans on Jetpunk in 2020: THE BRITISH ARE COMING!

In all seriousness, I actually like how Jetpunk has more diversity than it did before the pandemic :)