*UPDATED*Further to my previous thoughts on online identity, Doc SearlsDave Winer has a nifty little post about how we engage with social networks (including Twitter) differently.
"When people get together to discuss Twitter, and perhaps other social
networks (and Twitter is that, a bare-bones social network), they often
discuss as if there were a common user experience, but this is a
misperception, there are many different experiences …On Twitter I try to keep a ten percent ratio of people I follow over
people who follow me. For other people, maybe most, the ratio is
1-to-1, they follow approximately the same number of people as follow
them. Scoble follows thousands
of people. For him Twitter is like a very fast chatroom. For me it’s
like weblogs.com on a busy day in 2002. I’ve seen people who follow 0
people, for them Twitter is a publishing environment. Very different
experiences. To each of them Twitter is a different product."
Very astute point (obviously)… and something PR and marketing people should take into account when thinking about measurement.
We are dealing with social tools being put to social uses. It’s not simply a case of measuring Twitter as Twitter. It’s about measuring Twitter as totally diverse group of Twitterers each using the tool for different purposes
That’s the difficulty (impossiblility?). And the usual metrics suspects probably aren’t the right people to be doing the measuring.
Technorati tags: social networks, Twitter, Dave Winer, measurement, metrics
It’s a nifty little post, but it’s not mine. It’s Dave Winer’s.
Doc
Pah! That’s twice now this week I’ve credited the wrong person for a link. I need to slow down and proof my posts before hitting publish. Thanks for spotting it Doc!