Take The Twitter Ratios Test – and see what kind of tweep you really are
Our Twitter profiles provide a number of curious facts about us. In particular they give the following four figures:
Tweets: the number of tweets we have made since we started tweeting. I quite often look at that number when I'm considering whether to follow someone. If it is very high, I give them a miss. The last thing I need in my crowded tweet-stream is another 50 tweets per day!
Following: the number of tweeps we are following. I try to keep mine small by refusing to follow people whose tweets look dull, or who are marketing gurus (I make a few, rare exceptions), who are bots, or who are obviously just selling stuff. For all my vigilance, the number keeps growing.
Followers: this is the number of tweeps who follow you. You may think it odd, but I am constantly culling this number too – mostly using Twitter's "block and report for spam" option. Spam on Twitter is a cursed plague. I block and report about twice the number of tweeps who are genuine. I think some of the people banging on about marketing insights and their no-doubt-brilliant self-published fantasy trilogy don't even realise they have crossed the line and become spammers.
Listed: this is the number of tweeps who have added you to one of their lists (or the number of lists tweeps have added you to, which could be slightly different, but not significantly for our purposes.) I don't do lists myself, but they do seem enormously popular as a way of organising one's acquaintances.
It struck me how useful the ratios of some of these numbers might be. For example, marketing types are very keen not to "waste their time" following people who do not follow them back. There are even tools to help you see who these people are! Consequently, the savvy Web 2.0 tweep, will always have a Following that is almost exactly the same as their number of Followers – a ratio that is close to 1. When I see this, it makes me wary and, I have to say, reluctant to follow this particular 'guru'. I don't use my follows as a currency. I follow because the tweep looks interesting and is someone I wouldn't mind chatting to. A tweep who sees a follow as a unit of exchange, seems to have missed the whole point of why most of us are there.
So here are three, key Twitter ratios and what I think they mean (with a couple of examples). Of course, I may be wrong about how to interpret these numbers, so I'm keen to hear your own interpretations. You might like to calculate your own ratios to see what kind of a tweep you are. To calculate them, take the first number and divide it by the second. It's as easy as that. For example, if you are following five hundred people (Following = 500) and are followed by 250 people (Followers = 250) your Following to Followers ratio is exactly 2.
Following to Followers (F to F)
The closer this ratio is to 1, the more likely the tweep is to be a marketing guru.
The greater this ratio is than 1, the more likely the tweep is not trying to sell you anything.
The less this ratio is than 1, the more famous, beautiful, or fascinating the tweep is. (Famous because famous tweeps just have hundreds of thousands, or millions of followers and simply can't follow that many themselves. Beautiful because I have observed that attractive young women always have far more followers than ordinary mortals – that's why spammers always use avatars featuring this type. Fascinating because, well, I suppose there must be people out there who, even though they are not famous or beautiful, are still amazingly interesting – @shitmydadsays, for example.)
Listed to Followers (L to F)
The closer this ratio is to 1, the more these tweeps' followers value what they say – because they have taken the trouble to put them into categories that are accessible to others. After a quick survey of about four random famous people, I can say that the Listed to Followers ratio does not seem to correlate with fame. Perhaps famous people are actually boring in real life?
Tweets to Followers (T to F)
If this ratio is significantly over 1, the tweep is probably a bore – either because they rant on about their own fascinating self so much, or because they are always chatting to their five hundred closest friends in long exchanges that have tweets in them like, "Lol. Me too!" or "I haz beans. You?" etc..
If this ratio is close to and preferably just below 1, then the tweep is probably actively engaged with their followers, but not excessively so.
If this ratio is significantly below 1, the tweep is likely to be in the famous/beautiful/fascinating category.
The following table compares Stephen Fry (famous, fascinating, but not beautiful) and Katy Perry (famous and beautiful, but not fascinating) to myself (neither famous, beautiful, nor fascinating).
Tweep
Tweets
Following
Followers
Listed
F to F
L to F
T to F
Stephen Fry
8,376
52,671
2,562,148
42,028
0.021
0.016
0.003
Katy Perry
2,841
69
7,051,908
95,953
0.000*
0.014
0.000*
Me
5,869
1,269
1,384
226
0.917
0.163
4.241
Clearly, Stephen and Katy have the profiles of famous people on the F to F ratio, whereas I come out looking like a marketing guru! Perhaps only the truly famous and beautiful can get away with not following anyone at all hardly, and only tweeting occasionally. In fact, F to F and T to F ratios of 0.000 might become the new status symbol for the mega-famous. Certainly my own T to F ratio of over 4 is extremely undesirable. Am I really such a bore? Interestingly, my L to F ratio is ten times that of either Stephen or Katy, and I will take comfort in all the love that implies.
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*The number was so small that three decimal places just weren't enough!
