I was wondering what is the relative value for a like vs. a comment on a social media post (say Twitter or LinkedIn).<p>Let's say that value is measured in the number of views that an extra like generates vs. a comment generates.<p>Does anyone have a good calculation with logic to back up the result? (You can forget about causality and just make a case based on correlation)<p>As for my quick research: I ran a simple linear regression on an aggregate data set for about 800 random Instagram keywords where the variables were post views, likes, comments and found that the coefficient on a like is about 60 with P-value=0.012 but comments did not seem to be correlated with a P-value=0.47.<p>That would indicate that comments are basically worthless.<p>Of course, going back to causality: do likes increase views or do post with more views get more likes? More rigorous statistical analysis needed.
Well, the causality from views -> likes seems certain, whereas the causality from likes -> views is uncertain. Also, comments require that you not only approve, but also have something to add, whereas views are perhaps driven more by how often they are forwarded. So, a controversial or offensive post could gets lots of comments, few likes, and not forwarded to very many people, whereas a large number of likes is probably more often indicative of something you might want to show others.<p>Just an hypothesis, no proof.