Does Twitter lead to an increase or decrease in blog comments?

The proper metrics for social media have always been difficult to pin down, but I think there’s been an interesting cycle that’s emerged over the last few years. Before twitter exploded in popularity, comment counts on blogs were often used as a crude measure of community engagement  – the number of people willing to take the time to add something to a given discussion – augmenting simple view counts and link backs on the metrics sheet. As twitter has exploded in popularity, RT’s (re-tweets) and @replies have emerged as new indicators – the former having some similar properties to the “recommend to a friend” question so popular on consumer surveys, and the latter being somewhat similar to engaging in a conversation / making a comment.

One interesting piece of this in the very nature of community / engagement metrics shift a little bit – from being something within the “corporate boundaries” (i.e. on your site), versus out there in the Twittersphere (or some other ecosystem). But the big question I have – and I’d love to hear if anyone has some potential metrics on this – is simple: Does the rise of Twitter lead to more or less comments on people’s blogs?

I think a compelling argument can be made either way. On one hand, twitter makes it so easy to share information that those linking to a particular article should be able to find a wider audience. In turn, a wider audience should lead to more comments, everything else being equal. That argument would make sense to me.

On the other, there’s the time issue. If you assume for that everybody has a limited amount of time to spend each day absorbing and sharing information, an increase in one activity should lead to a decrease in something else. So one might argue that if someone is suddenly spending a ton of time reading and responding through Twitter, they might not have as much time as before to put in comments on blog posts. That argument would make sense to me.

Of course, both arguments can’t make sense. Twitter can’t lead to both an increase and decrease in comments on blogs, obviously. So which is it?

My best guess is that a pyramid structure is likely in play. Those that post the best content – say the top 1% overall, or in a given area – may be enjoying an increase in comments thanks to Twitter, as their message seeps out to a wider audience through viral promotion, etc. Everyone else may be experiencing a decrease in comments, as with so much noise out there and competition for time and attention, people just aren’t going to bother. For example, if you only *sort of* like something, for example, a quick RT with some extra characters thrown might be OK, while the time you might have put into commenting before gets diverted to other activity.

One of my main reasons for this is built on the idea philosopher Joey Tribbiani once presented on Friends – there’s no such thing as an unselfish gesture. If people are looking at ways to build their networks and influence in social media right now, I’d bet dollars to donuts that they can get more bang for their buck from a decent tweet than a detailed comment right now, thus that is where people’s attention is drifting.

But it’s just that – a guess. If anyone has any thoughts /insights into this I’d love to hear about it – in the comments, via twitter, via email, or otherwise. Not that I’m counting, of course .

Tagged as: blogs, comments, social media, twitter