Comments on: Twitter Metrics: Let’s Remain Scientific, Please!

By: Urs E. Gattiker

Urs E. Gattiker — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 16:52:27 +0000

STephanie, nice post, oops video, usually don't watch these.

I agree with you on the metrics problem and I have posted something about it here, not being aware of this post, of course my fault:

http://commetrics.com/?p=35

I feel metrics are great but the challenge is to find effective ones that address what you intend to measure - and yes, numbers by themselves mean little if anything.

And defining what is noise and what is not or value added versus noise is important and the time factor as we pointed out in the above post is an important control variable that must be measured as well.

Thank you for sharing this with us.

By: WinExtra » From the Pipeline - 4.27.08

WinExtra » From the Pipeline - 4.27.08 — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 03:54:36 +0000

[…] Twitter Metrics: Let’s Remain Scientific, Please! :: Climbing to the Stars - I’m not much for watching video posts but this one by Stephanie does an excellent job of bringing some sanity to this whole Twitter metrics nonsense. Well worth watching. […]

By: Claude Vedovini

Claude Vedovini — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 19:35:01 +0000

Good stuff, My main concern about this is: - multiplying or dividing figures does not make a stat. - all those "stats" are done on a small sample (the people I follow/who follow me) which is not representative

It reminds me when developers think they can do design or when designers think they can code.

I agree that a subject need not to be clearly defined to be discussed, however just spitting figures with disclaimers (à la Dave Winer) or arguing that since we have figures we should use them, does not bring much to the discussion.

It's only noise.

By: Corvida

Corvida — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 18:51:17 +0000

The video was great! I left more comments on Friendfeed, but I think you’re dead on with your conclusions and analysis. What Louis provided wasn’t sufficient evidence, but it was a starting point.

By: Louis Gray

Louis Gray — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 18:15:06 +0000

Looks good! I like the video update and hope your typing capabilities come back strong soon!

I made the Twitter Noise ratio to show how I think about it, and clearly, others think about it in a different way. Why measure? I guess, because Twitter gives us the numbers. If they stopped showing # of followers, # of followed, etc., would we be okay with that?

And yes, it's not perfect, but it certainly has people thinking about it. I hope new metrics debut.

By: Sean Reiser

Sean Reiser — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 18:14:24 +0000

I seem to have said this a few times the last couple of days, and you touched on it briefly, the only really way to measure signal and noise involves assigning a value to tweets (something you touched on briefly in you post). Where I agree that it’s subjective, it’s the only way I see to determine a value in someone’s tweets (something I wrote about a few weeks ago http://seanreiser.com/node/265).

Hmm,,, It occurs to me at the very least, I think we’d need a simple “digg style” I like / I don’t like this tweet (not favorites… something that can be used a little less judiciously). With that we could build a simplified model based on trust matrix.

I really don’t think it’s a problem of statistics, it’s more a problem of not having enough data for the statistician to use.

By: Steven Hodson

Steven Hodson — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 17:24:22 +0000

I am not one to watch video posts normally but I am very glad I did in this case - excellent post Stephanie.