Ranking the Twitter IQ of Newspapers

Ranking the Twitter IQ of Newspapers December 17, 2009

Posted by Allen Rindfuss in Bivings, Newspaper Study

In our newspaper study, released earlier today, we developed a formula we call the Twitter Interactivity Quotient (or Twitter IQ for short) as a way of measuring how newspapers were using their accounts. If tweeting, which consists of original tweets, responses to tweets, and retweeting others’ tweets, is viewed as a conversation, then the tweeting is effectively “talking”, while responses and retweets are evidence of “listening”. And, while not every conversation is equally balanced for a variety of good reasons, it seems reasonable to propose that the best conversationalists are those who cultivate balance over time.

Working off that premise, we combined the percentage of replies and retweets (listening) and subtracted it from 50 percent (a perfect balance). We then subtracted that number from 100% and translated it into a real number between .5 and 1.5, establishing “1” as the ideal balance. Accounts registering a .5 only tweet, accounts registering a 1.5 only reply and retweet, but they are equally out of balance in different directions. The Twitter IQ is the difference between an account’s “balance” and “1”. As such, in an ironic flourish, the lower one’s Twitter IQ, the better. The combined Twitter IQ employed in ranking the newspapers’ is simply the sum of the three applicable accounts. Below is a list of the newspapers who had the best aggregate Twitter IQ scores, meaning the three accounts we examined had the best overall balance between listening and talking. Please note that these results should be taken with a grain of salt, as we didn’t look at every single Twitter account for each newspaper.

Newspaper	Circulation	Twitter IQ
1. The Sun	210,098	0.0921
2. Austin American-Statesman	152,691	0.2834
3. St. Paul Pioneer Press	192,342	0.4807
4. The Florida Times-Union	122,655	0.4909
5. The Detroit News	169,748	0.5213
6. Chicago Tribune	501,202	0.5997
7. Democrat and Chronicle	135,776	0.6075
8, The Buffalo News	173,925	0.6159
9. Orlando Sentinel	206,205	0.6617
10. The Commercial Appeal	192,631	0.6620

Here is the list of the specific accounts we looked at that have the best Twitter IQ scores.

Twitter IQ Rank	Twitter Accounts	Twitter URL	Followers	Twitter IQ
1	Alesha Williams Boyd	http://twitter.com/AleshaBoydAPP	145	0.00000
2	Omar Gallaga, Digital Savant	http://twitter.com/omarg	3,652	0.00060
3	Sophia Ahmad	http://twitter.com/SophiaAhmad	2,243	0.00720
4	Julio Ojeda-Zapata	http://twitter.com/Jojeda	7,689	0.01300
5	Bethany Clough, Business Blog	http://twitter.com/BethanyClough	320	0.01380
6	Walt Mossberg	http://twitter.com/waltmossberg	24,773	0.01700
7	Michelle Deal-Zimmerman	http://twitter.com/suntravelblog	1,349	0.01730
8	Gus Sentementes	http://twitter.com/gussent	1,601	0.02360
9	MichMoms	http://twitter.com/MichMoms	1,004	0.03020
10	Los Angeles Times	http://twitter.com/latimes	38,845	0.03500

See our full rankings of the newspapers in aggregate, and the individual accounts themselves, at the link below.

Update: We decided to remove the list of the lowest ranking accounts, since it wasn’t our intention to bring negative attention to those with low scores.

11 comment(s)

About this blog

The Bivings Report (TBR) is a source of news, insight, research, analysis and conversation on web-based communications and its increasingly powerful role in the economy, politics and society. TBR content is created, posted and managed by internet strategists, media/communications analysts, web developers, designers and programmers, all of whom are employees of The Bivings Group.

Email Subscription

Search Site

Trackbacks/Pings

The Use of Twitter by America’s Newspapers - December 17th, 2009 at 7:23 pm
Clases de Periodismo » Post Topic » Así usan Twitter los diarios de Estados Unidos - December 18th, 2009 at 2:22 am
Twitter and Newspapers « Wir sprechen Online. - December 18th, 2009 at 10:52 am

Comments

+1 Kim - December 17th, 2009 at 7:58 pm

I’m confused that The Salt Lake Tribune’s account is listed as being so low. Where does the 1.3813 number come from? If I look at the full report spreadsheet, our main account @sltrib scores a 0.409. Even the relatively inactive Sundance account, which we only use for the festival and when there is fest related news (dry most of the year) scores a .5208.

We have a very interactive feed compared to most media out there, have won awards for our social media work, and have several active staff members on Twitter as well. Where in the world did you come up with 1.3813?
Kim - December 17th, 2009 at 8:02 pm

Just to follow up… now that I look at the rankings again, our score of 0.409 on our main account should put is as the number three TOP Twitter newspaper, and nowhere close to the bottom of your rankings.
Allen Rindfuss - December 17th, 2009 at 9:05 pm

I appreciate your position, Kim, and as a Sundance Festival alum and general fan of your beautiful state, am sympathetic.

Having said that, the rankings system I devised is intended to take into account balance on a scale from .5 to 1.5, and as such, the closer a balance score is to a 1, the higher the account is ranked. Accounts that predominantly tweet (often via some kind of feed) have a balance score closer to a .5, and accounts that predominantly retweet/respond have a balance score closer to a 1.5. The absolute difference between 1 and the balance score determines the account’s ranking…meaning, the closer an account’s Twitter IQ is to zero, the higher it is ranked for our measure of interactivity balance.

The aggregate newspaper rankings are based on the sum of the Twitter IQ for the three accounts measured, and, again, the closer that score is to zero, the more balanced and the more highly ranked.

As the study points out, due to its limitations (number of accounts/paper, in particular) it is imperfect. And there are doubtless other valid measures of a newspaper’s social media success.
Ted Mann - December 18th, 2009 at 11:36 am

I think the address for Alesha Williams Boyd is incorrect. Should be http://twitter.com/aleshaboydapp
Allen Rindfuss - December 18th, 2009 at 2:17 pm

We’ve corrected the address to reflect Alesha’s most current account, Ted. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.
Gordon - December 18th, 2009 at 5:56 pm

Nice to see the Baltimore Sun doing so well. We all know that numbers never tell the whole story. The key to twitter success, I believe, is in the relationship that reporters have with their community (P2P, in particular) as well as the quality of their reporting.
Maurine Heiskell - December 20th, 2009 at 4:14 am

Where do you get your inspiration? I’d have problems writing something this good.
Brian - December 21st, 2009 at 1:49 pm

Thanks for an interesting study.

Just a heads up, but you addressed the wrong Twitter account for The Omaha World-Herald and Omaha.com. A fan (I hope) set up a Twitterfeed account to grab all of our headlines and publish them (not quite sure why). You grabbed that account (@omahawh). In reality, we tweet as @OWHnews (as well as a number of sports accounts).

The Bivings Report - powered by the Bivings Group