Aspects of Ratios - Noises, Signals and Friendliness

If its Friday, its time for a Louis Gray post . Like Louis, I love doing little bits of analysis of social network dynamics.

This latest is an interesting one, on the ratio of posts to followers by various people Louis follows over 3 months (Actually, looking at who he follows is interesting in itself).

He believes that its a way of thinking about signal-to-noise ratios:

One of the informal guidelines I've used since opening my Twitter account a little over three months ago was to maintain an updates/followers ratio of less than one. I feel if I "tweet" too often, those following will opt out or gain in annoyance. As of today, my ratio is at 0.49, with 318 updates for 644 followers, putting me on the quiet side in comparison to the others I looked at.

Its a great piece and a start in an emerging area of metrics (as Will McInness et al are also kicking off with MeasurementCamp) , but I'm not sure it measures signal to noise per se as it has no time basis inbuilt, and looks at relatives output rather than the relative input I experience - for example, although some bloggers have a low relative post/follower rate, I experience it as a huge volume compared to someone who posts less often but has far fewer followers. Conversely, there is a very chatty London scene - most people are sub-Dunbar in followings, but the chit-chat through the day is continual, and because everyone knows everyone its more relevant - that "ambient intimacy" that Leisa Reichelt (another Londoner) talks about.

I also feel there are two other aspects to the ratio (hah - geek pun ) of Twitter S/N, which are:

- the level of "interesting content" vs "drivel" from any one person. Just how one measures this I'm not clear though, but I have turned off quite a few A listers because they don't say very much of interest.

- The level of interaction they are prepared to have with me (the "Broadcasting Index"). I won't name names but some of the people on that list of Louis' are much more interactive than others, I tend to eventually drop the ones who won't converse.