The Conversational Index

Stow Boyd talks about the Social Scale of Social Media and refers to it as the Conversational Index. Don Dodge further explaied that the “Conversational Index measures how much conversation is happening on a blog by comparing the number of Comments and Trackbacks versus the number of Posts. Meaning, there should be more comments and trackbacks than posts to show that it is a conversation, not a one way broadcast“.

Although the two computes the index in completely opposite directions of the scale, both basically has the same meaning and measurement.

The formula is as simple as the quotient of your total blog comments over entries (Don’s formula draws a better numerical picture):

CI = { total blog comments + total trackbacks } / total blog posts

My blog’s Conversational Index would be 10.62 (6,340 comments & trackbacks /597 entries). Per Don’s formula, the higher your CI, the more conversational your blog is.

A new Web 2.0 service called Megite tracks such conversations.