The moment I got out of our meeting with the client today, I performed the first of my usual mobile-OCD rituals: I checked out the Surevine Yammer updates.

The iPhone Yammer App reported 22 in just 2 hours, which is good going, I thought.  As I started to weave through them, a familiar doubt started nagging… “so what?”

I have, as have most of the rest of you, been experimenting with what the various Web Social Tools we have at are disposal are for.

I am a “bursty” tweeter.  Twitter tells me I have only tweeted 1335 times. So, although it doesn’t feel like this to me, I guess I am much more of a “lurker” in Twitter.

One thing I have noticed, and other people have commented on, is the way of measuring the public utility of a tweet, is to either measure the number of  re-tweets (RTs) or the number of replies. In fact some tools use this as a measure of your online “reputation” or what Cory Doctrow would call your “Whuffie Factor.”

By that measure, I am a sad loner. Like a slightly mad traveller on a tub train who occasionally shouts something out, clearly part of an internal dialogue, but which you have no context for, and therefore find a scary invasion of your privacy.

Sure, there are other ways of measuring your reputation – the number of people who follow you, or stop following you. The reciprocation of follower-ship. But how many conversations you have begun, continued or are engaged in, has got to be a key measure.

It makes sense that online social graces are broadly similar to those in the real world, perhaps a good on-line conversationalist:

• Listens deeply and actively (demonstrated by replies to other’s tweets)
• Doesn’t use closed language (asking open-ended questions invites a response more than just a “yes” or “no” answer)
• Demonstrate Emotional Intelligence in their use of language (gauging how others feel about things)

It strikes me that not many of my tweets score highly in this regard, and not many of our combined Yams do either. Maybe we should be thinking a bit harder about our Yams. If they only say “doing TP first” that’s not really going to engage anyone in conversation…

What do you think?