Are they still Following Me ...
A few months back I described a simple index to measure the quality of the engagement on the platform. Today we will see how the quality of the engagement has measured over the last few months.
Types of Comments
In order to get a feel for the data we are looking at lets first look at a graph of the number of comments per day (for the last 3 months) that included the words "Follow me", "Follow" or "Upvote".
This graph has a pronounced trend. Clearly the number of people asking for follows is reducing. The trend in the upvotes is caused by services such as 
Etiquette
As new user it is natural to be eager to get followers, and it can be very difficult at the start. When I joined Steemit last October I read some Etiquette about commenting. The advice was not to ask for follows or upvotes. Being new to social media at the time, I followed the advice but I see some reasoning for it.
How would you feel if you spent ages writing an article, agonising over the every word, spell checking, even getting it reviewed by people before posting for someone to come along and (probably not even read it) and just to comment follow me?
In some cases it may be ok to point someone to your work but probably best to engage with their work rather than trying to direct people to your own work. I don't think comments on other peoples posts are a place for self promotion.
Is there a way to measure how much of this is happening on Steemit?
Followmenomics
Using the concept of an informal index, like the Big Mac Index, "The Follow me Index" quantifies aspects of the quality of the engagement here on steemit.
Using the number of comments that include the word follow (not followed) and scaling it by the number of daily comments I have created an index which measures the level of these types of "Follow Me" comments.
Follow Me Index
The index of "Follow Me" comments provides an informal way of measuring two aspects of Steemit Engagement:
- The number of people looking for followers
This could be used as a yardstick for new users and in particular users coming from other Social Media Platforms where there is a recognition that number of users are key. - The Quality of the Engagement
This index is scaled by the number of comments per day which means a downward trend shows these "unpopular" comments are reducing overall, and combined with the number of daily comments would give an indication of the quality of the engagement on the platform.
Observations
The follow me index is indicating that the quality of the comments is either improving or that there are less people coming over from other Social Media platforms. The truth is probably a little of both.
I am part of a Steemit Business Intelligence community. We all post under the tag #BIsteemit. If you have an analysis you would like carried out on Steemit data, please do contact me or any of the #bisteemit team and we will do our best to help you...
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Data provided by 
from steemsql.com
Thank you for reading this. I write on Steemit about Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Travel and lots of random topics.
