(no subject)

[learnedax]

It has been said several times that I seem to post quite rarely to LJ (for someone who actually uses his journal), and wondering if that's true I did a quick sanity check on the numbers. In five years I've averaged 2.5 days between posts. Amongst people I consider very active users, 1.5-2.5 days seems to be the typical range, with a small set way over (like jpicon with 2.6 posts per day), but not necessarily with a corresponding perception of increase in usage.

So, open-endedly, with perhaps some sort of poll to come once I've isolated the key factors, what do you think drives your perception of usage? Volume of posts? Length of posts? Consistency of posting (I for instance seem to have large variance between peaks of activity and valleys of not using LJ much at all)? Interestingness of posts? Comment volume of posts?

What makes you think someone is a significant user? Do you consider yourself a very active user, and what affects that perception?

Comments

[qedrakmar.livejournal.com]

Volume and length coupled. Those who post 3 one liners a day, I would consider less active than someone who posts a novel every other day.

Random reactions

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

1. You are bursty. For example you've posted more in the past two weeks, it feels like, than in the previous two months. (note: 'feels like')

2. Filters. I am 3x more verbose inside my filters. Others are worse or better.

3. 2.5/day vs 1/2.5 days is 6:1. That's a big difference...

4. Posting about self vs. posting about 'stuff' changes my perception. Not in an easily quantifiable way either.

5. Boring me vs. interesting me. If you interest me then I'll think you post less than you do. If you bore/annoy me I will think you post *more* than you do. This may be a superset of #4.

6. Frequent short posts seem more frequent than frequent long posts. This may fall under #5 above. (I don't care how many calories you had for lunch. Sorry.) lj-cuts matter here in a non-trivial interaction.

Re: Random reactions

[learnedax.livejournal.com]

Interesting. The content impact is not wholly surprising, but I hadn't considered that #5 would be a sort of inverse correlation.

Re #3: it is a huge difference, but more than one per day, on average, seems to be out on the long tail.

Re: Random reactions

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

I am at .85/day myself and consider myself to have slowed down a lot since joining 5 years ago.

[peregrinning.livejournal.com]

My perceptions are thus:

1. To me, one post per day is an average user. Some people do one per day like clockwork, others do so in bursts. Some have long lists of what they do, some just have brief comments on individual items.

2. Significant users are those who are posting multiple times per day, and having conversations in the comments inspired by their posts. LJ becomes their social discussion group. Often, these folks have a job that provides ample time for having such discussions.

3. Content has some factor on perception of usage. "Posts quite rarely" copuld mean "we hear from them only once every few weeks," or "they post daily on cryptic minutiae and favorite shows, but never tell us how they're doing," or "once a month, they bring us up to date on 20 different threads.

4. I perceived that there was a significant span of time where you didn't post at all, and then I saw a few posts from you. That perception led me to think you had been away from LJ for a time.

5. People can be active users without ever posting anything in their own journal. Seeing their names pop up constantly on comments in other people's posts is a big part of this type of activity.

[learnedax.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes, activity through involvement in others' posts. I hadn't thought much about that, although it seems clear now that you mention it that it would have a huge impact.

I think 1/day is more frequent than any but a small subset post. You, for reference, post once every 2.2 days, and I do not think of your posting as infrequent...

[peregrinning.livejournal.com]

I look at active users like rufinia and liamstliam, who post multiple times a day, as my comparison. You seem to be able to look these things up: what are their posts per day/days per post numbers?

I have some month-long gaps in my posting record. How long of a time-frame are your numbers based on? One year, or all the way back to the creation of the account?

[learnedax.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, the only convenient metric I know of is looking at the full profile page and dividing the age of the account by the number of posts. This doesn't give any sort of graph of usage over time, but does have the benefit of counting posts on all privacy levels.

liamstliam is at a post every 1.2 days, which is pretty heavily active, and rufinia is at 2.7 posts per day, which is the highest I've seen so far. Perhaps I have looked at an insufficient body of data to be able to make any good generalizations...

[gyzki.livejournal.com]

Another metric is looking at the archive calendar by month. Clumsy and time-consuming to do for any great number of people over any great period of time, but potentially useful for tracking trends of usage over time. For instance, you cite rufinia as the highest user you've tracked (and I would agree), but it might be useful to compare/contrast rufinia unemployed, with rufinia at old job and grad school, with rufinia at new job.

Me, I think of myself as posting about 2 out of every three days, and the age/posts metric bears that out, roughly. But a look at my calendar shows nearly one per day the past few months, and back in my first year (2004) sometimes less than one per week. (Of course, my current "nearly one per day" includes a lot of "[cute observation] Just sayin'," which isn't much of a post.)

The speeding phenomenon

[cristovau.livejournal.com]

For me lj use is sort of like driving. People who go faster than me are maniacs, people who are slower are tortoises.

Size and speed matter. Originality matters. One thing I've noticed is there is a momentum factor. The more you post, the more interest you generate.

I would be interested in seeing a stat on frequency related to comment depth.

[laurion]

Meh, I rarely post. I comment fairly often. Am I an active user?

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

It has been said several times that I seem to post quite rarely to LJ

Perhaps part of that perception is that you very often (it seems to me) make short, obscure posts which are essentially null content for anyone who isn't extremely tuned in to your life already.

[learnedax.livejournal.com]

V qba'g zabj jung lbh zrna.

Ok, point. My policies on information distribution in a semi-public forum are, in fact, rather baroque, and my normally terse style does not help that...

[umbran.livejournal.com]

I note that "significant user" and "active user" need not be particularly connected. A person who posts only once every week or two is not active, but if they are read and discussed by many other users, they may be rather significant to the service as a whole.

I am neither significant, nor particularly active.