t factor: A metric for measuring impact on Twitter

TL;DR

The paper introduces the t factor, a new metric inspired by the h index, to measure the impact of entities on Twitter by analyzing tweet and retweet data in a balanced manner.

Contribution

It proposes the t factor, a novel impact metric for Twitter that combines tweet and retweet data, reflecting influence more accurately.

Findings

The t factor effectively quantifies impact on Twitter.

It correlates well with perceived influence.

The metric is easy to compute and interpret.

Abstract

Based on the definition of the well-known h index we propose a t factor for measuring the impact of publications (and other entities) on Twitter. The new index combines tweet and retweet data in a balanced way whereby retweets are seen as data reflecting the impact of initial tweets. The t factor is defined as follows: A unit (single publication, journal, researcher, research group etc.) has factor t if t of its Nt tweets have at least t retweets each and the other (Nt-t) tweets have <=t retweets each.