Social Media Metrics – Topsy

David — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 12:57:05 +0000

I regular write for Research Information, an online and print publication about online content and information management. Whilst online publishing can give you access to a host of statistics not readily available in the traditional printed copy, publishing on someone else’s site means that you have to look for some of the traces left on the web. Whereas in the past I would have first looked for inlinks to web pages, now I tend to focus more on the conversations happening on social media sites such as Twitter.

Today I was pleased to see how the two Research Information articles that have been published up to now [there are more in the pipeline] compare with other articles in the same journal.

According to Topsy 81 of Research Information’s web pages have been mentioned on Twitter, and the most popular two are by me: Programming skills could transform librarians’ roles (78 mentions); Web 2.0 fails to excite today’s researchers (67 mentions).

As would be expected, at least by the biblio-/webo- metricians amongst you, the distribution of Twitter mentions broadly follows a power law.

Which means third place is quite a distance behind on 43 mentions, and the vast majority of pages have only been mentioned once or twice.

Metrics are only the start of a conversation rather than the end, as there are a host of possible reasons for the difference in Twitter mentions, e.g., my papers may be considered more controversial by some sections. Nonetheless, it’s nice to start the conversation from the top of the pile .

David Stuart » Research Information

Social Media Metrics – Topsy