Comments on: Introducing The ReTweetability Metric

By: Twitter Manners | Social Media Coaching Center

Twitter Manners | Social Media Coaching Center — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 12:57:40 +0000

[...] and thank you. If you want a post re-tweeted that’s more likely to happen if you say “Please RT“. Of course this means your post has to be that much shorter. Always thank people for [...]

By: Translating Twitter speak and garnering retweets

Translating Twitter speak and garnering retweets — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 04:17:03 +0000

[...] interesting post by Dan Zarrella introduces a metric he called the “ReTweetability Metric”. He proposes that a person can use a simple equation to determine how retweetable their posts are [...]

By: Popularity vs Value on twitter

Popularity vs Value on twitter — Fri, 07 May 2010 09:33:20 +0000

[...] been taking part in ReTweets make a point of starting today. Based on his hypothesis Zarrella developed a formula to assess just how valuable your twitter stream is, he called this value your “Retweetability [...]

By: Bosilytics

Bosilytics — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 11:59:02 +0000

Very nice. Thank you for doing the legwork in identifing the ratio of what is starting to be the closest to a conversion in Twitter we have so far -a “RT”. Or at least one measurable by the masses.

I do agree with Dave, the presentation is much easier to comprehend, or at least makes nice since when quering results:
COUNT(like *RT*@bosilytics*) / (Opportunities)
WHERE (Opportunities) = (tweets in a day) * (followers)

Again, brilliant due to the fact that it is easily calculated, has a fair amount of normalization and after a couple trial runs I think it is something to act upon (or at least seriously consider after a little more digging).

Couple notes:
1) I think a higher value should be added to a users 2nd, and outer social cloud. While being retweeted by a follower is always great, getting RT’ed outside the cloud gets exponentially more exposure.
Problem: presently, this is hard to measure without a nice tool budget.

2) I do think the name Opportunities is more telling. THis is also more scalable as a scoring method is derived

Jim: While you will have your spammers and their network of spammers that can easily throw off this number, the shere nature of friend/folllow weeds these guys/gals out anyway. That said, until monetary value is put on a RT, why cheat?

Again, very nice. Now, who is going to make the ReTweetability calculator usign the API? …only wish it could be I.

By: Jim Lane

Jim Lane — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 03:48:28 +0000

With the focus being on numbers, this measurement measures popularity and misses the quality factor.

Mere retweeting is one thing, but a retweet by a quality person is much different than a retweet by a spammer.

There is also the whole issue of the quality of what is being retweeted. And, then the quality of who the retweet goes to.

As a popularity metric, perhaps this works.

Quantity is always easier to understand and measure than quality. Quality calls for judgment.

jim

By: Stefanie

Stefanie — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 00:26:46 +0000

This is a great concept, eventhough I do agree that the additions dave made improve the whole calculation. Still think it is only an indicator, and the solution has to involve more variables. However, I haven’t seen a better solution so far.

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 21:18:39 +0000

It’s also disorienting that you chose to multiply the results by one million, somewhat arbitrarily. Maybe you can show the results as a percentage (something like “.015%” for Fat Wallet) or flip the ratio (1 in 6440 opportunities results in a ReTweet, again for Fat Wallet). Keeping the numbers representative of some real world value will make them much more usable and easy to understand the importance.

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 21:14:43 +0000

I think you formed/explained your ratio in a confusing way. Try something like this:

(# of retweets) / (Possible Retweets)

(Possible Retweets) = (tweets in a day) * (followers)

Then, you can more clearly state that you are effectively measuring the percentage of retweets out of retweets possible. I would leave “average” out of the formula, since it’s possible (but difficult) to gather exact data (i.e., the exact number of followers at the time of each tweet), but state that in reality it is much easier and mostly accurate (except in cases of major changes in number of followers) to use averages.

By: Warren Sukernek

Warren Sukernek — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 21:10:33 +0000

Wow, great concept! An excellent way to normalize things and focus on the actual content. Can you create a table of the top Retweetability Metrics of all people with over 1000 followers or some other reasonable number?