Definitions

Churn 

Churn is defined as the number of removals (un-follows, in our case) over the average size of the existing base (followers, in our case) during the period measured. We can get there with:

Drops / (Current Followers - ((Adds - Drops) / 2))

Legitimate Followers 

“Legitimate Followers” is a measure of your true, realistic reach. To find this number we take the number of people that Twitter says are following you, and then subtract the following:

• Any of your followers who are following more than 2,000 people are considered not-Legitimate... they’re probably not really monitoring your feed, so we don't count them as "Legitimate".
• Users who have been suspended by Twitter can’t read your tweets (and probably weren’t interested in the first place!). We don’t consider these Legitimate Followers.

Loyalty 

Loyalty measures the length of time Followers follow a Twitter user. GraphEdge measures different types of loyalty because:

• Current Follower Loyalty is the average of the known durations of your currently active Followers. Users who have stopped following you since you signed-up are excluded.
• Historic Follower Loyalty is the average of the known durations of all Followers who have dropped you since you signed up with GraphEdge. Users who currently follow you are excluded.
• All-Time Average Loyalty combines these to get the average of the known durations of all Followers you've had since you signed up with GraphEdge, both Current and Historic.
• For all calculations, we include only Legitimate followers (see above).

Note that we're limited in how accurately we can measure these numbers, for the following reasons:

• We don't have a start date for any Followers you had when you signed-up. As a default, for calculations, we use your sign-up date (the earliest date we can confirm they were following you).
• For your current Followers, the Loyalty number is not yet known, because they haven't stopped following you. As a default, for calculations, we use the current date (the latest date we can be certain they will continue to Follow).

The Loyalty number we report can never be longer than the length of time you have been a GraphEdge member. In future, we plan to find ways to estimate real/expected Loyalty from statistical patterns in your (and others') Loyalty history.

Second-Level Network 

Who else are my followers following?

The Friends of your Friends are your Second-Level Network. For Twitter, we use the followees of your followers (the other people your followers are following). For our calculations we ignore any of your followers who are following more than 2,000 people. We do this to keep the numbers "crunchably" small, but also because anyone following that many users probably isn't actively monitoring those users' feeds, so their "follow" (of you and of others) probably doesn't count for much.