This post deals with item 2 on chebrutas list.
I searched for coinnames randomly selected around fastcoin in the coinmarketcap.com ranking and listed the number of resultpages on bitcointalk. Here are the results:
Digitalcoin: pages:22 rank:20 cap: $ 4,378,411
Netcoin: pages: 9 rank:22 cap: $ 3,847,467
Cryptogenic Bullion: pages:6 rank: 26 cap:$ 2,132,715
Copperlark: pages: 6 rank: 27 cap: $ 2,126,335
BBQcoin: pages:23 rank: 29 cap: $ 1,382,926
Goldcoin: pages:22 rank: 30 cap: $ 1,337,799
Fastcoin: pages:14 rank: 33 cap: $ 1,045,012
Tagcoin: pages 5: rank: 34 cap $ 980,309
Mincoin: pages 16 rank:35 cap $ 928,605
I calculated the correlation coefficient between bitcointalk talk measured in search result pages for a coinname and marketcap dollars for the same coin and the result was around 0.0
This little study shows there is no strong relationship between the amount of talk on bitcointalk and the investor adoption for altcoins in the position range 20-35 in the marketcap ranking.
It does not mean that it does not pay off to talk positive attention gatheringly about a coin on bitcointalk though, since the study has not qualified what type of talk there is in the searchpages and can make no claim other than it probably does not function well to talk randomly about a coin, the talk you do must have a quality to it, because quantity in itself has proven to have little effect.
Usually, though, in many areas, large activity is enough to grab attention from people and make them invest time or money in something, this not being the case with coins may indicate that the vast majority of investors do not spend time reading bitcointalk before making their investment, suggsting that not even talk with good quality has any large effect on market cap.
While quality talk at bitcointalk may still have a good impact, the study shows it's not that large and I'm wondering if there is something better to prioritize?