I spoke at the 140 Twitter Conference this week and during my panel Robert Scoble asked me if I had any ReTweets-per-Follower (RTpF) data on users listed on Twitter’s official suggested users list. I didn’t but I realized it would be a very interesting data point to look at.
I looked at the roughly 200 suggested users and compared them to the 200 most followed users not on the list. Since many of the suggested users are the most followed people on Twitter, they had a much higher average number of followers.
However when I looked at the average number of Tweets-per-Day (TpD) posted by suggested users versus non-suggested top users, I found that non-suggested users tended to Tweet a bit more frequently.
Then I started looking at ReTweets-per-Day (RTpD) and found that since they have so many more followers, suggested users are ReTweeted somewhat more often.
To control for the difference in follower counts, I then calculated each user’s number of ReTweets-per-Day (RTpD) divided by the number of followers they had and found that non-suggested users tend to have more ReTweets-per-Follower (RTpF), meaning they have, on average more ReTweet-friendly followers.
I then calculated my favorite ReTweet metric, ReTweetability. That is the number of ReTweets-per-Day divided by the number of Tweets-per-Day over follower counts.
This is designed to control not only for differences in follower numbers, but also for differences in tweeting-frequency to show just the “virality” of their content and their followers. (I’ve written about this metric before.)
The result is clear, suggested users are far less ReTweetable. I think this is likely due to the fact that many of the followers gained by those users on the suggested list are new Twitter users and may be less ReTweet-savvy.
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{ 11 comments }
You have way too much time on your hands, Dan.
Haha just kidding, excellent info and great analysis. Thanks for putting it together!
Cheers,
Glen
Great stuff, as always!!! Of course, this is still not necessarily a calculation of Authority.
Anyone notice that they have the half the cast of Star Trek TNG on there? Punky Brewster, Weird Al, Jessica and Ashley Simpson, and the Dell Outlet for questions on your broken refurbished dell. I understand your statistic
Joe
i am a newbie and i find these stats very interesting, thanks for your time and effort, someone has to question how twitter really works. lol
Very insightful (though I think we all could have guessed). Another interesting metric would be celebs vs. non celebs in the suggested users list.
Sure, people retweet celebrities – partly in hopes to catch celebs attention, or just associate their name with the celeb. But not necessarily because what they say is interesting.
The non-celeb suggested users are RT’d because what they say is actually interesting. As such, they should almost be included in the other category.
Basically, that’s a long way of saying that celebs are retweeted because they are celebs, not because the tweets have any value.
I’m reminded of a similar ‘white paper’ (tongue firmly in cheek) blogpost I wrote awhile back (lost to history I’m afraid!) … in it I developed the “Paris Ratio” which is based on:
1. Your name or meme-name google count
2. Paris Hilton’s google count
3. “John Smith” google count (common name filter)
computation was fairly straight forward (but long forgotten) which let you know your ‘fame value’ vs. Paris Hilton’s fame value.
Additional ‘white paper’ produced regarding the value of Micheal Jackson’s handshake (back when he was selling his handshake or something MJish like that).
Good to know the silly metrics live on in Twitterville!
I’m new to Twitter, so if I’m totally failing social media etiquette with this approach, please let me know! But I have to wonder – why RT them at all? My viewpoint is that my network (tiny though it may be) would already be aware of top and suggested users, and would have followed them if they wanted. I don’t need the same story from 20 different sources. @RotaryKat
I wonder why the suggested users dont twitter as much but are still ” suggested”.
I dont use twitter (but intend to start) so maybe i will look into it more.
My impression of the “suggested” is a list of “trophy accounts”. It starts in sales that you highlight your presitge factor and attract those that want to associate with that level of clientele.
That’s all. It keeps it interesting for those that are wanting a quick follow list.
let’s see twitterers organized based on their category…science, celebrity, activism, social-media maven, marketing etc…that would tease out data that has more significance…
Dan,
Thank you for yet another excellent article. You were one of the people I had in mind when I tweeted, “Anything worth doing is worth measuring.”
Carl Ingalls