Scoble makes a call for a useful metric: engagement. What does that mean?

Well, I’ve compared notes with several bloggers and journalists and when the Register links to us we get almost no traffic. But they claim to have millions of readers. So, if millions of people are hanging out there but no one is willing to click a link, that means their audience has low engagement. The Register is among the lowest that I can see.

That sounds like a good measure, if we can get it. The trouble is, it's probably hard to get. Consider: I don't see much of an uptick in traffic when I get linked on various high traffic blogs, but I don't think it's due to non-engagement. Rather, it's due to a significant shared audience.

When a big social site - like Digg, Slashdot, or Reddit links to you, the overlap is smaller (in percentage terms), so you see a much bigger avalanche - from people who aren't aware that you exist. Over in the political sphere, it sounds like a link from Instapundit can have the same effect. So the measure Scoble wants would be highly useful, but I expect it'll be hard to get - it's in that "I know it when I see it" category, seems to me.

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