The Twitter Conversational Index And The Twitter Noise Ratio

A few weeks ago I wrote about the The Twitterized Conversational Index. I am updating the formula, based on helpful observations from many that the number should increase as there is more conversation, so here it is, inverted:

Boyd’s Twitter Conversational Index = (number of tweets / number of replies made by followers)

Louis Gray suggests that a Twitter Noise Ratio is interesting:

The many thousands of people who use Twitter do so in wildly different ways. Some use it to deliver minute by minute updates of their daily activity. Others use it to hold conversations with friends and peers using the service. And still, a good percentage of people use Twitter as a broadcast medium to announce items, but not necessarily to engage. Meanwhile, as Twitter has grown, its not uncommon to see people either following, or being followed, by thousands of other users. Some do so reciprocally, while others are more discerning.

I feel there are different categories of Twitter users, from those who have a listening audience, measured by a high “followers” to “updates” ratio, those who are engaging, seen with near equal “followers” and “updates”, and those who are more noisy, with a lot more “updates” than actual “followers”.

Taking a look at 48 Twitter users I either follow or engage with, I found the average number of “tweets” per “follower” was almost exactly 1, measuring at 1.02. But the ratio of updates to followers varied widely, from the sleepy 0.06 (@om) to the firehose-like 9.75 (@corvida). And surprisingly, those Twitterers best known for creating a lot of noise, like Robert Scoble and Jason Calacanis, were quite in line with their number of followers, measuring in with ratios of 0.50 and 0.18 respectively, making their perceived noise to be in fact, a consequence of their engagement.

I guess both are indicative of certain aspects of sociality in Twitter.

My Twitter Noise Ratio = @louisgray my #TwitterNoiseRatio = 3981 updates / 2729 followers = 1.46.

At this second, I haven’t figured out where or how to get the number of replies that have been sent to me. Twitter doesn’t offer than number up, and none of the stat tools I know of will either. But once someone tells me what it is, the Index will be a better indicator of sociality, I think.