The "Big Mac Index" was introduced by the Economist as an informal way of measuring the purchasing power parity between two currencies.
On Steemit we can use a similar concept to measure the quality of the engagement on the platform.
This following graph shows, for the month of July, the number of comments per day that included the comments "Follow me", "Follow" or "Upvote".
As new user it is natural to be eager to get followers, and it can be very difficult at the start.
Etiquette
When I joined Steemit last October I read some Etiquette about commenting. The advice was not to ask for follows or upvotes. Being new to social media at the time, I followed the advice but I see some reasoning for it.
How would you feel if you spent ages writing an article, agonising over the every word, spell checking, even getting it reviewed by people before posting for someone to come along and (probably not even read it) and just to comment follow me?
In some cases it may be ok to point someone to your work but probably best to engage with their work rather than trying to direct people to your own work. I don't think comments on other peoples posts are a place for self promotion.
Is there a way to measure how much of this is happening on Steemit?
Followmenomics
Using the concept of an informal index, like the Big Mac Index, I have creating a "Follow me Index" which will quantify aspects of the quality of the engagement here on steemit.
Follow Me Index
Looking at the number of comments that include the word follow (not followed) and scaling it by the number of daily comments I have created an index which measures the level of these types of "Follow Me" comments.
The index of "Follow Me" comments will provide an informal way of measuring two aspects of Steemit Engagement:
- The number of people looking for followers
This could be used as a yardstick for new users and in particular users coming from other Social Media Platforms where there is a recognition that number of users are key. - The Quality of the Engagement
This index is scaled by the number of comments per day which means a downward trend shows these "unpopular" comments are reducing overall, and combined with the number of daily comments would give an indication of the quality of the engagement on the platform.
Recent Related Posts
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I am planning an update to this last post in the next few days.
Data provided by @furion from steemdata.com.
Thank you for reading. I write on Steemit about Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Travel and lots of random topics.
So what do you attribute the July 10-July 17 spike in "upvote" comments to?
All 3 show a bump around the 15th but the "upvotes" trend appears to remain significantly longer in duration.
Bots?
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It could be something like the 4th July holiday when people find out about Steem, followed by a week for approval, then lots of new users who hadn't spent the 4th July holiday reading etiquette guides hitting the system.
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That makes sense.
My approval only took a day or two and I think I've seen mention that it's taking a week or two now.
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That coupled with the reviewers or at least some of them being off on vacation too.
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Interesting. How did you do this? Did you make a bot that checks all comments for key words?
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Excellent post! please follow me!
just kidding!
.....but not really
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when I saw the word BIG MAC I was instantly intrigued
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I am hungry now for some reason :)
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Me too, Wheres the nearest mcDs XD
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That's interesting to see... I am going to guess the slight downtrend might be due to an increased awareness (and accompanying annoyance) in the "older" community towards these kinds of comments... and more and more of them getting either flagged, or at least a semi-nasty response. It'll be interesting to see what it looks like a month from now.
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There seems to be a lot of it on the STEEMIT facebook page too, literally every second post is "Follow me and i'll follow back". The page itself is unbearable, I left it only a few days after joining.
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People must get followers this way or else they wouldn't continue to do it.
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Great post and analysis. Have resteemed!
Quick clarification - is this Comments only, not blog posts?
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Thank you. This is comments only. A lot of people may have a tag line in their posts follow upvote or resteem so not so sure this would work best on posts.
I am working on some word clouds for the text from blog posts at the moment :)
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Yes I agree, a call to action in a post such as follow, upvote or resteem is totally acceptable....its kinda like a youtuber saying subscribe to my channel at the end of every video
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@eroche ive been following you since i started steem i dont know if you realised but i have a proposition
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Graphs can be fun after all!
You got an upvote & resteem from me.
Steem on beyond the moon, lets take it way further than that. Good luck to us all.
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