Comments on: The Twitter Influence Ratio

By: Twitter ratio – restrictions? « Sylwia Presley

Twitter ratio – restrictions? « Sylwia Presley — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:01:22 +0000

[...] what it means? Is Twitter restricting the amount of friends or followers? I looked for the info on different blogs writing about Twitter ratio (ratio of our Twitter followers to our friends) but I cannot see [...]

By: sandrar

sandrar — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 23:19:12 +0000

Hi! I was surfing and found your blog post… nice! I love your blog. Cheers! Sandra. R.

By: kelly

kelly — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 09:19:48 +0000

Oh so you’re saying I am a friendwhore! haha

Well, at least I have people who are willing to read my public updates and know me as a person and more. NONE of my friends (except a few from Facebook) are on Twitter. Sad! So I view my “Twitter stats” as “good results”.

But more importantly I DON’T look at the number of followers as just NUMBERS – they are human beings with motivation and desire too! Twitter is always about 2-way communication, and if used solely for broadcasting, people will unfollow.

Students have an easier time, they can get class-loads of people to follow them anytime! Getting followers is one thing – keeping them (interested for long) is quite another.

Thanks for the discussion Nikki!

By: Mike Chapman

Mike Chapman — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 15:42:32 +0000

Doesn’t it depend on what your reasons for being on twitter are? I have more following me than I follow, but I try to follow almost every human who follows me. Why? I’m not trying to broadcast to an audience using twitter, I’m working on building relationships. I also make it a point to unfollow anyone who isn’t in the business of following back. Why? I’m also not interested in being part of someone’s broadcast audience on twitter. Finally, influence is much subtler than twitter follower numbers for what I need to achieve. Great post.

By: How many followers do you have on Twitter and does that make you influential? | Business on Twitter

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 08:02:59 +0000

[...] post from Allan Young with his thoughts on ‘The Twitter Influence Ratio’ or how you can decide whether [...]

By: Allan

Allan — Sat, 03 May 2008 05:45:47 +0000

Rachel,

I’ve got $20 in the mail addressed to you. Thanks for the kind words. You were always the sharpest in the UVF shed, so it means a lot coming from you.

-Allan

By: Rachel Strate

Rachel Strate — Fri, 02 May 2008 05:22:01 +0000

Allan,
You never cease to amaze me. I just found your blog and have only read two entries, yet am smiling from ear to ear. I wish I could write / think like you.
Thanks.
Rachel

By: Sonny

Sonny — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 22:36:07 +0000

The twitter influence ratio looks like an interesting idea. However, it seems it is only useful if there is a large enough sample size. For example, a person with 5-3 split will have a higher “ratio” than a person with 1000-1000 split, although the person with the 1000-1000 split likely will have a higher “influence” simply because he/she has a much larger sample size. Is there a way to account for the sample size in the ratio?

By: Allan

Allan — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 07:40:59 +0000

@ Matthew – Unfortunately, I’m a bit innumerate so although I wanted to do some kind of weighting similar to Shirky’s “some minimum amount of attention,” I got lazy and skipped that step. He’s much more of an expert than I’ll ever be, but I think he’s dead on with the part about reciprocation. Twitter’s reciprocal structure allows better measurement but, as you suggested, also allows gaming and posturing. What you’re also suggesting is similar to Google’s PageRank algorithm (of course I’m just guessing here) in that the “nature” or “quality” of the people “linking” or “following” you also has an impact on your “score.” I absolutely agree and I wish I had the mathematical chops to have baked that into the Twitter Influence Ratio.

By: Matthew Reinbold

Matthew Reinbold — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 19:21:14 +0000

Fascinating analysis. I find the calculation follow/following extremely analogous to Clay Shirky’s thoughts on fame in his latest book ‘Here Comes Everybody’. He’s talking about fame but, for many practical applications, that could be the same as influence (pg 91):

Fame is simply an imbalance between inbound and outbound attention, more arrows pointing in than out. Two things have to happen for someone to be famous, neither of them related to technology. The first is scale: he or she has to have some minimum amount of attention, an audience in the thousands or more. (This is why the internet version of the Warhol quote – “In the future everyone will be famous to fifteen people” – is appealing but wrong.) Second, he or she has to be unable to reciprocate. We know this pattern from television; audiences for the most ppular shows are huge, and reciprocal attention is technologically impossible.

Those statements imply some problems with the calculation (although I know its original intent was just a fun exercise). First, I could create a dummy public twitter account and just let whatever spammer or numbers happy guru link to it that they want – in which case I’d have a large number of followers and would be following no one: a division of zero resulting in infinite ‘influence’. But while the formula implies influence (and lots of it) the actuality is a very non-influential bot. There is no minimum amount here and so the numbers are misleading.

The formula also doesn’t take into account the nature of those following. It implies that every person following is equal in influence to every other person. As nice as human equality is this just isn’t the case. A twitter account may only have one follower but if that follower is the head of a multi-million dollar hedge fund its arguable that the account has tremendous influence.

But overall, great, thought-provoking piece!