Services such as Alexa provide rough estimates on the popularity of different websites.
Using this data over a period of time allows us to get a rough measurement of the overall popularity of skin sites and to see if customization is something that is increasing in popularity, steady, or on the decline.
The forumula we use is as follows:
100,000 / (1/Rank^1.25)
The benchmark sites we use are:
WinCustomize.com
deviantART.com
Skinnables.org
VelocityART.com
Teknidermy.com
ArtUproar.com
Deskmod.com
Skinz.org
Neowin.net
Skinbase.org
Customize.org
Pixtudio.com
We take the formula and add them up.
In December that number was 8.4.
This month it's increased to 9.0. A dramatic increase.
Most of the increase came from DeskMod, deviantART, and WinCustomize. But there was a general increase across the board.
The conclusion we reach is that people wanting to make Windows their own personal OS continues to expand into the mainstream.