“The problem I wrestle with in this argument is that it must start with the supposition that’s every blogger and social media player has the very same goal.”

That totally nails the results of a lot of conversations I had with the bloggers covered in the list we analyzed. Some thought it was really engaging; some thought it was pretty cool and had a lot of questions (which were a great education for me); and some reflected your statement above — that it wasn’t necessarily what they track (or at least not the most important thing).

Adjacent to that is the fact that some really valuable stuff — interpersonal interactions — take place off the grid, as it were, in formats like email, or evolve from online venues to offline ones, where we can’t track systematically at all.

It’s definitely part of the opportunity of the metrics “space”, I think, given that things are so embryonic yet. Ilya, our CTO, has said he thinks the solution to RSS, filtering, engagement measuring, metrics, etc. will be a variety of applications that can work in combinations, and given how many different sets of priorities I’ve seen, I’m certainly inclined to agree.

http://knowledge.emory.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1153%23

If I’m given the choice, I’d choose both numbers and engagement.

This really is not an either/or question. There is nothing that will will take engagement away just because you have high RSS subscriber numbers.

In the modern, online world, it’s on-going customer/reader relationships that count more than simple uniques, RSS subscribers, or sales based on coaxing a customer into a one-off transaction.

So, how do you measure the success of a relationship?

As you’re suggesting, that requires a more complex set of metrics than we have today because the beauty of interacting with real people directly is you never are 100% certain what outcome (positive or negative) may result.

There have always been lots of ways to casually evaluate relationships in our personal lives but now marketers are confronted with the challenge of measuring them on a vast scale to determine ROI.