A few weeks ago, Stowe Boyd started a big round of discussion when he created the “conversation index” as a measure of blog vitality.

While working at Corante, I had the opportunity to peer at the stats for all sorts of blogs that we had going. And one thing that became really obvious is that successful blogs — ones that were currently viable and vibrant, and those that were on a growth trajectory from their start — shared a common characteristic: The ratio between posts and comments+trackbacks (posts/comments+trackbacks) was less than one. Meaning that there was more conversation — as indicated by the number of comments and track backs offered by readers — than posting articles. I will call this the Conversation Index, just to put a handle on it.

Discussion of whether or not this is an accurate reflection of a blog’s vitality, popularity, or quality has long since tapered off (though it did enjoy a brief revival when Russell Beattie turned off comments on his blog and stuck his hand into an angry angry nest of hornet-bloggers…). But I’m not here to talk about whether or not comments make the blog. I am here to say, “Hey! Look at our Conversation Index!”

Damn. 43/262 = .164. We’re rocking. Granted, this is artificially inflated slightly by the fact that we all comment on posts, but as I see it, that’s part of the conversation (plus, who doesn’t respond in the comments at least occasionally?).

But see, the point of this post, is that we’ve had some great discussions here at alwaysBETA in our time alive, and I wanted to thank some of the people who made it possible. Both the “RSS is 90% Awful” and “Fine. You Win. RSS Sucks.” posts have had great discussions thanks both to Pat Collins and Matt Walters.

If you missed the discussion from Brendan’s post on iTunes, Patrick from Twilight Electric dropped in to share his thoughts on iTunes music sales from a musician’s point of view. But the longest running comment thread so far, is of course, the customizing Lightbox post, which is currently sitting at 71 comments, or a full 27% of all of the comments on this site.

So I just wanted to say thanks for making this blog more than just a soapbox (even if it is a very pretty, standards compliant soapbox). It wouldn’t be half as fun without you. So comment away, our SparkStats plugin is watching you.

Stowe’s closing is good enough for me.

And of course, my thesis: any successful blog starts in a small way, but from the very beginning is highly social. It is a place, a shared space, not a container for articles. The best predictor of blog success — aside from previous success in other blogs — is the Conversational Index, because it contains the outcomes of many other small things done right.

Hurrah.

P.S. Stowe wants this:

No, the Conversational Index is much better for the artisanal level of blogger. So I hope someone out there — some bored toolsmith, or a computer science student looking for an interesting project — will build a tool that will scan a blog, determine the CI, and provide the result as a chicklet that we can embed on our blogs. Even better would be a 30 day graph, like Tufte’s sparklines, that shows the social interaction ebbing and flowing.

Give us one day.