I remember a while back a huge debate on how to measure engagement. I remember Eric Peterson’s huge formula that reminded me of mathematical analysis courses I had recently survived. Someone (I seem to recall it being Avinash Kaushik) was very much against this. And so the debate began. In my opinion, Avinash (or whoever it was) made the most sense. Boiling it down to one number is not very helpful. Directional change is meaningless with so many variables involved. Proving this would amount to some mathematical analysis of limits I’m sure.
Taking this historical anecdote into account, can you imagine my response to TweetLevel‘s importance metric? What makes your twitter activity valuable is different from what makes mine valuable. Suppose I’m using mine to promote my blog and you’re using yours to just tell people what’s on your mind. I would ultimately be interested in clicks back to my blog, while you may ultimately be interested in how many followers you have (while using the number @reply’s as an indicator of engagement).
Any time I see anything more complicated than a rate, I cringe. Don’t hide meaning. What if you had an engine similar to Google Analytics new Intelligence that could tell you what has changed and why it is important? Remember this: What you measure is determined by why you are doing what you’re doing.
