Engagement - how do we measure Social Network Engagement (Social Networking by the Numbers - but the problem is that Social Networks were measured by numbers of members not by engagement, even though Engagement - Social Network Engagement is what Liz Gannes was talking about)?
In New Rules of Engagement, the New York Times put the measure of "engagement" inside of us:
"...engagement "happens inside the consumer, not inside the medium," Mr. Plummer said. "All the measurements we have now are media metrics: ratings, readership, listenership, click-through rates.""
But you know what, Facebook is getting into the act (getting in "your face" so to speak) and defining what Facebook thinks Engagement for Social Network is and how it ought to be measured. Now, if I could only get someone, high up, on Facebook to join our Social Network Committee....that would very interesting.
Now, what Facebook is doing might be the beginning of some kind of standards for Social Network Engagement:
"...we want to make sure that you completely understand how we will be measuring engagement. We define engagement as the number of users who touch your application every day (measured from midnight to midnight each day).
These touch points are:
- Canvas Page Views
- Link Clicks in FBML
- Mock-Ajax Form Submission
- Click-to-Play FlashThe number of engaged users is calculated by putting all of these touch points together. We display this as the number of "Daily Active Users." Next to it we also show what percentage that is of the application's total number of users.
This change is part of our commitment to making Facebook Platform better for both developers and users. And, we hope that through this change, you continue to focus on creating engaging applications which add maximum utility to a Facebook user's everyday life."
If I'm reading this correctly, what Facebook is going to measure is not so much engagement of a user, but the engagement of an application running on Facebook.
So we might end up with a list of the most engaging applications of Facebook for the week, or the most engaging for the month, or for all time.
I'd also like to get some definitions on Canvas Page views and Mock-Ajax Form Submission events.
Engagement (defining Social Network Engagement and how it should be measured) is one of the main focuses of the new Social Media Committee of the Web Analytics Association that I'm the Director.
They're getting there - at least they are supporting the importance of "how long ago" as a primary driver when defining engagement.
Now if they would only supply this same info at the user level, they'd be getting somewhere. I'd be willing to bet most of this "widget engagement" is spread across a small base of users in any one period.
Real question is this: what percent of heavy widget users have not used a widget in the past 90 days? In other words, what percent of the user base is now dis-engaged?
That's a useful measure of engagement.
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