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I created an account in January and posted to it twice. It now has thirty eight followers.
Ten days ago, I created an account on which I tweet a random line from a popular A-list blog to every five minutes, for a total of 2,284 updates as of this writing. It now has twenty six followers.
Given my experience, I would say there is a lot of "noise" following going on...
I have wondered what constitutes noise as I try to find the best way to use Twitter.
Coming from a technical background where I spent a lot of time dealing with noise, your natural enemy in the wireless world, I have come to the conclusion that noise is defined by your perspective.
In reality, in regard to radio, noise is mainly made up of good signals that you are not trying to listen to at that time. We use a specific antenna and tuner to filter out the good signals we do not want, in order to receive the specific signal we do want.
I follow people for specific reasons and to me the relevant information they post is what I'm interested in. If they post tweets relating to what they are having for dinner, then I feel this shows me a little about their personality. As long as this superfluous chatter is kept to a minimum and the information or signal I am interested in is the focal point I am happy.
This may not be the case for everyone though, as I'm sure there are people who will be interested in the culinary habits of the people they follow, just not me.
and, gee, fun to see my ratio of 4.84 puts me high in the "Converationalists" category, right there with Kedrosky
cheers,
Graeme
www.twitter.com/graemethickins
I have my Twitter account set to only send me replies if I follow both people. I'm still not inundated with posts that way but am able to participate in conversations. I think if you removed all my replies, which have quite a bit of back-and-forth to them, my number would have been WAY lower.
Web 2.0 Expo killed my numbers, though. It's pushed me higher than Arrington for the month. I've already put my phone away. Time to be back in home mode!
Rather than measuring "noise", perhaps we should be measuring "interestingness"? Arguably, the more followers you have, the more interesting you are.
By the way, Elliott Ng hits the nail right on the head, doesn't he?
Oh ... I'm a noisy (but middle ground) 1.75 with 3,256/1,862 ;)
http://web.forret.com/tools/twitter-tq.asp
http://twitter.com/bryangreen
Metrics are fantastic, but everybody in this world is different and being able to collate the data in a fashion that is useful is one thing. But being able to give people the option to use the data as the choose is the more difficult task.
As the creator of TweetStats (http://tweetstats.com), I'm always looking at useful ways to represent data and it is definitely not an easy task. And while I'm trying to tackle it, I'm not sure if I'll be successful, but this...and many other metrics...are at play in the approach I am attempting to take.
In the end...we all use Twitter in wildly different ways. :)
Tweets/month or some of the other metrics suggested in the comments would be much better.
You wrote:
"I feel if I "tweet" too often, those following will opt out or gain in annoyance."
I'd respectfully submit it has to do with WHAT you tweet about, and WHAT your 'followers' expect from you.
If I were to give you one winning stock tip after another on Twitter and that's the reason you follow me, would you object to my tweeting 7 times every minute? :)
And by the same token, if you follow me to learn how to optimally manage your time and find me tweeting only once a day, telling how I'm painting my garden fence, and giving you progress reports... well...
Just like any 2-way communication tool or service, Twitter following is a reflection of implicit promise and perceived value. When the 'match' is right, frequency becomes simply a side issue!
All success
Dr.Mani
Dutch style?
I read about research that in the Netherlands people tweet much more (more updates per day) than in the USA or UK for instance.
Looking at some of my top twitterazzi, the people I @ reply and interact with reveals high ratio's like >30 and even 44 (!). Very noisy by this ratio, but not annoying to me.
So maybe there are cultural differences in the way people use twitter as well. And also, more 'noisy' followers means more replies = more tweets. This will add up faster than the increase in followers.
My ratio of updates/followers is now 12,16 (3040 updates, 250 followers), see http://www.twitter.com/vanmaanen for my twitterpage.
: Marc
Check out Twitstat.com, it gives you real time Twitter analytics, shows items like;
- Top10 tweeters per day,
- most social (Percentage of users tweets that were a reply),
- most engaging (Ratio of replies to a user per tweet of that user),
- replies to,
- most happy, most angry, etc
- Your @replies (if you follow @twitstat)
My stats: http://www.twitstat.com/cgi-bin/view.pl?search=...
Currently I am at almost 24.000 tweets (december 23rd, 2008)
I did look up this post yesterday, as I had a discussion on twitter noise. For some reason the date has now changed... I did not change/add the previous postings.
@louis Gray: Any chance of changing this back?
Best wishes for the holiday season and for 2009.
are still accurate, and were not changed. What is it you think should
be altered?
I think it is an excellent measure - one that should launch each person into qualitative questioning to see what the proper ratio should be for his/her purposes. Think of it in the same way that we wouldn't toss out liquidity or leverage ratios for business without thinking what's right for a given type of business, e.g. retail vs. manufacturing.
I got here because I wondered about this ratio as an in indicator of quality and knew I could find someone who had already thought on it. Had to go back a year, but this discussion is still relevant.
I think what would orient this conversation is a listing of some assumptions - in this case the assumptions I'm using to say this is a valid measure:
1. Talk too much - people leave or relevant follower # doesn't grow (at extreme, imagine one follower, 100 tweets)
2. Say irrelevant things - people leave or relevant follower # doesn't grow (nuf said on this one - it's the twitter stereotype)
3. Talk too little - people leave or relevant follower # doesn't grow (at extreme - imagine one tweet)
Since I'm a little skeptical about pruning rates, only because I can't find data on that and because it's a bit of work to go back in an cut people out that just sit quietly in your queue...I will look at "# of relevant followers" and the growth in that number as a quality indicator.
So, with this, I imagine that relevant content at a volume that suits your target audience should produce visible growth in that audience. This makes my tweet to follower ratio highly relevant. I'm creating optimum quality of content to grow an audience by talking just the right amount and then by saying useful stuff when I do. Further, while skeptical about pruning rates, I do believe that people drop at a reasonable rate when they see content that doesn't interest.
I'm at .12 which makes me a Listener - Cool with that but let's not think of this as a passive thing. Other people appreciate someone who listens. But, more than that, I see this as thoughtful broadcasting: Speak when you have something to say and people will buy into that. The proof will be the type of follower you get, not necessarily the volume.
For certain businesses, I believe 500 followers is a perfect number and that 1000 could be an awful one.
Much peace.
e