Ask HN: What Does a Social Media Analytic Want and Do?
1 bpavuk 1 9/5/2025, 5:16:41 PM
I want to build a social media analytics toolkit for Bluesky (and possibly expand it to every social thing I use) just because I can. I have a crapload of time, and I want to put it into building a tool for a domain I don't quite understand with people that do understand. It all comes down to a question, which data does a user need and in which wrap?
So, I'm asking it - what do you measure, plot, and derive as a social media analytic? What would you if you were one?
1. MAU. Monthly Active Users. Active means they did anything on the platform.
2. Time Spent. One way or another, that platform lives to get and keep eyeballs on screens.
3. Post/content views, clicks, shares.
Views could mean page visits, or post viewed for n seconds or more, or video viewed at least 10% of 50% or 90% of the way through.
Think: clicks (interactions) per impression (view) for a post / piece of content.
4. Actions Per Viewer (reactions/shares/comments per user viewing the content). What % of visitors to a piece of content do something other than passively consume it or pass it by? This can identify "sticky/interactive" content people engage with.
5. For content/ads performance: landing pages visits per impression; signups per impression; sales per impression, follows per impression, attributable revenue per content item, etc.