Weblogsky: Blog Conversational Index: say what?

« "Bubble 2.0 Is a Bubble in Media" | Main | Pinata »

Blog Conversational Index: say what?

Stowe Boyd says we should measure the worthiness of our blogs by something he calls a Conversational Index, which you derive by dividing the number of posts by the sum of the number of comments and trackbacks. The lower the number, the better your CI... you hope for a CI less than one, in Stowe's world.

I have some thoughts.

This is an incentive to end the war against comment spam, because the more I get, the better my comment index. *8^)
Am I more effective because I draw more attention from vocal people, and other bloggers? How do we measure the lurkers? How do we measure the quality of responses, and the cluefulness of responders?

jon posted this at 1:09 PM
Share on Facebook| email to a friend

Comments

Some online conversations happen through blog comments, others through IM and email and in-person sideband and voice and ... and ...

No one index covers any meaningful part of it.

Stats lie. Using stats to measure utility just encourages people to game the stats. Not a game I want to play...

Posted by: Edward Vielmetti | February 4, 2006 2:51 PM

I'm with Ed. This is the same sort of conversation that happened years ago in forum based online communities that wanted to develop metrics of success. The mores posts in a thread, the better. Not always so. The context of conversation is FAR more important that the volume or even the ratio of participation (beyond one person talking alone!)

Posted by: Nancy White | February 5, 2006 5:08 PM