What’s Your Blogging Style? Use FriendFeed Likes/Comments Ratio to Find Out

June 26, 2008 by 14 Comments

Julian Baldwin asked a question today on FriendFeed: “Roughly speaking, what is your comment to like ratio here on FriendFeed?” Based on the responses, a  lot of folks are doing more commenting than liking, but I suspect the responses aren’t totally representative. Still you can see a lot of emphasis on commenting.

Which made me wonder about turning this around a bit. Instead of looking at each person’s ratio of Likes to Comments, what could be gleaned from figuring that ratio out for a blog?

I selected several blogs, and totaled the number of Likes and the number of Comments for the last 30 posts of each blog. I then calculated the ratio of Likes to Comments, and mapped the bloggers to roughly one of four blogging styles:

  • Stir it up
  • Can we talk?
  • Observing the scene
  • Stuff you want to know

There are some adjustments and limitations related to this; they follow below. But first, the map of bloggers to blogging styles. To reiterate, the ratios you see below are calculated this way:

# Likes / # Comments = blogging style

So for instance, Dave Winer’s ratio is actually below 1.0. He gets more Comments than Likes. Here’s the map:

As I put this together, the analysis does seem to ring true from my perspective.

Here are the adjustments and limitations:

  • Some bloggers are really active at responding to comments on FriendFeed. This tended to drive their number of Comments up. For instance, Alexander van Elsas could put on a clinic in terms of engaging commenters on FriendFeed. I should be so good. So I gave the number of Comments a haircut for several bloggers.
    • Alexander van Elsas – 33% haircut
    • Myself – 25%
    • Mark Dykeman – 25%
    • J. Phil – 25%
    • Colin Walker – 25%
  • The analysis only applies to the main blog for each person (listed below)
    • No Toluu activity updates
    • No Qik videos
    • No side blogs that augment the main one
    • Etc.
  • Only the blogger’s own feed was used in this analysis. This is imperfect, as it does not include Likes and Comments for other ways thr blog post gets into FriendFeed:Google Reader shares, tweets, direct posts, del.icio.us, etc.
  • Some great new bloggers aren’t here, as they build out their blogs with posts.
  • The 30 blog posts per author only included entries with at least 1 Like or Comment.

And quickly, here are the links to the blogs used in the analysis:

What do you think? Does the Likes/Comments Ratio make sense as a blog style indicator?

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See this item on FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/search?q=%22What%E2%80%99s+Your+Blogging+Style%3F+Use+FriendFeed+Likes%2FComments+Ratio+to+Find+Out%22&public=1

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