ShareThis, Starcom MediaVest and Rubinson Partners have released the results of the largest analysis of sharing patterns ever published. The team analyzed the digital patterns of sharing via the ShareThis widget, across 7 billion pages of content viewed in March 2011. The analysis encompassed 300 million users and more than 1 million different domains. The results are quite fascinating, and underscore just how significant sharing activity has become in driving internet traffic. Read →
AOL and Nielsen Online released the “Content is the Fuel of the Social Web” report in April 2011, analyzing over 10,000 social media messages to explore how consumers share content online. The data offers marketers insight regarding the best ways to advertise and reach consumers online, including on social sites. Overall, 93% of internet users turn to email to share content, while 89% use social networks and 82% use blogs. Read →
A small study (84 students) conducted at the University of Pennsylvania yields some interesting results about the use of mobile phones (calling and texting), email, and Facebook among college students. Students were asked which of the above services they would rather give up for a week. Read →
A new study by Exact Target/CoTweet finds the frequency of email, Facebook and Twitter use among US smartphone owners to be significantly higher than among those without a smartphone. 45% of smartphone owners check their email “constantly” during the day, vs. only 28% of non-smartphone owners. 23% of smartphone owners check Facebook “constantly” vs. only 12% of non-smartphone owners Read →
A new report by Forrester shows that social media and other channels are beginning to drive more website traffic, though search engines are still easily in the lead. Younger generations in particular are more heavily influenced by social networks, online forums, and Twitter as drivers of website traffic, as reported by Marketing Profs. Read →
CNN has released the results of of a June to August global study into the “power of news and recommendation” (POWNAR). The company surveyed 2300 global respondents, and used “semiotic analysis, neuro-marketing techniques, news tracking and an ad effectiveness survey to demonstrate that shared news drives global uplifts in brand metrics.” According to the survey, [...] Read →
// UPDATE / CORRECTION: Embarrassingly, we inverted the results from a key chart in the report in our original post. The original headline read “49% of Facebook Fans More Likely to Buy” — that is actually the percentage of respondents who disagree with that statement. We have corrected the data in this post, and we [...] Read →
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have intensively studied the New York Times list of most-e-mailed articles, checking it every 15 minutes for more than six months, analyzing the content of thousands of articles and controlling for factors like the placement in the paper or on the Web home page. The results show that: People preferred [...] Read →