To be "active" on FF: 1. Posts actual comments on a regular basis and responds to same. 2. See #1. - Cyndy

Create some sort of content on FF via comments and likes or FF links (ones using bookmarklet and are not fed in by RSS) - RAPatton

I don't even know what makes ME active yet. - James Ferguson

anyone who contributes on a regular basis. good or bad - Cee Bee

I think your activity should not just be twitter, either. - Michelle Martinez

When I try to determine whether to follow somebody I look for comment frequency in their profile. If there was some easier way to determine posting frequency/quality in the profile (other than scanning recent postings) that would be a good measure as well - Brian Sullivan

+1 Cyndy and RAPatton - Susan Beebe

I've been using a combined comments/likes of at least 50 in the last week as my knee jerk measurement for FF activity. - felix

Interesting: I wouldn't have expected the age of the activity to be so small. I don't mean this as a call out (he's just the only one I can think of off the top of my head), but let's take Mitchell Tsai. He goes on trips lasting for a week or more, but when he's here, he's incredibly active. If you take a week as the measuring sample, he'd be considered inactive. - Mark Trapp

they comment on this thread :) - Jeremy Toeman

Disclosure: I'm working out an idea in my head for an Alltop-like list that's based off an individual account: you supply your Friendfeed credentials, and it generates an Alltop style list of your top 100 subscriptions. One of the major points of concern with what Guy Kawasaki did was that he included inactive people: I want to see if there's a way to account for activity programatically that makes sense to people. - Mark Trapp

A few daily interactions? - Shey

Likes and comments are going to be a better measure than content shared, but not much. It's a thorny issue really, because you really want to rank people by the quality of their interaction rather than the quantity. - Jonathan Beckett

I consider the "active" people to be the names that pop up on a daily basis. Whether it be a comment, like, blog, link, etc. I think it's just having your name out there for everyone to see. - David Cook from twhirl

+1 Cyndy and RAP and I like Mark Trapp's point, as I'm a prime example. ; ) Some weeks, I just can't make the time for FF; others, I'm commenting like a fiend. - Carla Thompson

Disagree with commenting part. I comment some but I like more. I use FF daily. I am an active user who comments less frequently. This is part of what is great about FF. Every user can use the service in their own way. - Franklin Pettit

I think if you're submitting content/commenting/liking - your an "active" user. - Nicholas James

Franklin - I think "likes" qualify you as active but don't contribute much to someone's wish to follow you. I am not totally sure of Mark's objective here but most people seem to be interpreting his "is someone active" question to mean "worth following". Maybe Mark should clarify - Brian Sullivan

Participation in discussions other than your own and posting more than your feeds and links to your content. - Trish R

i'm fine w/ whatever way someone wants to engage on ff, whether its just as a push aggregation of their presence elsewhere w/out personal interaction or whether they just comment & like but never push anything net new (blogs, photos, bookmarks, etc...) - i think tolerance for personal preference is real important in a free-form environment like ff - mike "glemak" dunn

Harmony: Follow,Like,Comment,Post,FF "Best"! - Igor Poltavskiy

@Brian - yes that is worth clarifying. Worth followoing is not comments based to me. Despite my lack of comments I would think my stream is pretty active. I blog post, google reader shares, and del.icio.us bookmarks a fair amount. The value of a FF friend is not only their comments in my opinion. - Franklin Pettit

Franklin -- I agree -- postings are a factor as well as comments. Postings that have comments I think are especially attractive as well and should figure into the "followability index" - Brian Sullivan

Wow "followability index" I like that term. - Franklin Pettit

Some rare people have 0 posts/feeds, but comment/like quite a bit. And if a popular blogger posts a lot, and their posts generate discussion, but they don't interact on FriendFeed...is that really such a bad thing? Some measure of reactivity/inspiration would be nice; e.g. does someone's activity here generate further interesting discussions. Also, does someone bring unusual content to FriendFeed which no one else does? I like Brian's "followability". Perhaps it's "non-troll-ness"...why do we like X? - Mitchell Tsai

I think in general the discussion here is focusing on visibility and not activity; or perhaps content creation directly or indirectly as opposed to content assimilation. I disagree with the classification itself, as such. Many times, I'd much rather 'remain quiet and be thought of a fool, than speak and remove all doubt'. Assimilation of content is as much activity as creation or propagation, which we don't have any means of measuring. - Parth Awasthi

Parth, the idea of "activity" needs some sort of context: while assimilation and understanding of content might be a huge amount of activity for you personally, it's internalized. Others won't see it as such, only as it is manifested in the quality of your comments. So the internal activity isn't a useful measurement for anyone other than yourself when determining if you ought to be followed. Additionally, you may be a great assimilator, but if you never give back, all the assimilation is for naught, right? - Mark Trapp

People have personal preferences for the kinds of people they like to follow, which can make the "What does active mean" or "what constitutes followability" issues "tough". It would be nice to have better (1) stats (2) recommended people in FriendFeed, so working out some better algorithms could help the FriendFeed team (so it's not just trying to figure out new A-List and B-Lists). I love the posts by Mona N, edythe, and RAPatton. How can I find people with similar posts (but who aren't as active)? - Mitchell Tsai

Another thing as I'm reading these comments is talk of making this the ultimate discovery mechanism: I wonder if it's more useful as a means to quickly go through the people you're already subscribed to: if you want to get a good survey as to what's happening on your personal Friendfeed now without spending time and watching Friendfeed for a period of time, you can just pull up your top Friends, based off of likeability, followability, and activity, spend 15 min. scanning that, and go and do other things. - Mark Trapp

Good point Mark. For someone to be worth following you would expect them to add value, though someone could be an active user of Friendfeed just by consumption. I think there are consumers, importers, and participants, and the participants are the ones that seem to be worth following. - Kevin Bondelli

I would say someone who is "active" on FF is someone who spends some portion of their day participating in conversations that originate from others. It's easy to participate in the conversations that stem from your own posts - but to actively seek out and participate in other conversations, to me, is an "active" member.... - George Smith

A person that is active on FriendFeed comments on the entries of _others._ Remember that del.icio.us and Disqus can create FriendFeed comments on entries. Posting messages to FriendFeed is also another thing to keep in mind when judging the activity of a person. - Rishabh Mishra (p248)

Mark: Absolutely True; but I think I didn't communicate my point correctly, we are on skewed planes. What I'm propounding here first, is that essentially all measures of activity that are quantifiable are the visible ones. So, systematically speaking; the visible users are the active users. Also, classification of such a nature doesn't seem justified to me because (in general from the discussion) I get the feeling we are trying to move to followability, which probably has less of a correlation with activity - Parth Awasthi

Parth, "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." I think if you frame the discussion using only people you're not already subscribed to, "followability" may convey more of the intent than "activity," but I think there may be some value to this exercise when applied to people you're already following, which would make the term "followability" a less ideal term. In both cases, it's a behavioral analysis: the intent is to rate what I see you do, not what I don't see. - Mark Trapp

A few of the commentators maybe focusing too heavily on the number of interactions instead of the "level" of interaction. I consider someone active if I can tell that the comments and entries they've left have some point beyond just filtering their RSS. - Steve Spalding

"Active": intelligent, substantive commenting and *dialogue*. Everything else is fluff. - Sean McBride

yea, I'd say active posting directly to FF and the occasional comment - Brian Ries

Mark - I consider myself active. I post ave 5 bookmarlets daily, review the Best of Day, and follow 5-8 friends daily. Today I have 175 comments and 104 likes this week. Occaisionally my posts end up in the Daily best. I also add new subscriptions and follow most who subscribed to me. I would also consider some one active if they only commented on 10 posts per day. - Russellreno

I'd go for a mixed frequency of reading, postings, likes, comments on a "many times daily", "daily", "many times weekly", "weekly", "monthly" and "less" basis. - Dominik Schneider

It is actually quite simple, they are active if I can remember seeing them recently. - Geoff Schultz

Geoff nails it on the head - Doug Brooks

Comments, value of comments, likes, FF posts, automated posts. In that order. - Tony