Social Network Sharing Trends
AddThis, the sharing platform owned by Clearspring, is huge (or uuuuuugggggge, as Donald Trump would say). It’s used by more than 11 million sites, which gives it aggregate sharing data for more than 1.2 billion users — and a bird’s-eye view of the relative popularity and influence of everything from a Facebook Like to a click on a Google +1 button.
Today, AddThis releases its year-end look at social-sharing trends. Clearspring gave Ad Age a sneak peak at the report and is letting us share the graphic below. You can find out more about AddThis Analytics — the tool for publishers and marketers that produced the graphic — here. For now, some notes and context on the graphics:
According to AddThis data, Facebook accounts for 52.1% of sharing. Given the size of AddThis’ data set, that number’s probably a solid proxy for sharing across the entire web.
Twitter was up 577% this year and accounts for 13.5% of sharing, per AddThis Analytics.
Usage of Google’s +1 button grew in 2011 but has plateaued, according to AddThis. And if you want to feel bad for Digg and MySpace, just take a look at their depressing shrinkage numbers.
AddThis tracks what browsers its users prefer. Great news for Google’s Chrome: It’s been on a hot streak and actually overtook Firefox last month.
An astonishing 28% of shares on AddThis in 2011 have been about Osama bin Laden’s death. Other news and events that were widely shared on AddThis were the earthquake on the U.S.
East Coast, the Japanese tsunami and earthquake, the death of Steve Jobs, the launch of Occupy Wall Street, the British royal wedding, the resignation of Hosni Mubarak, Hurricane Irene, the final Space Shuttle mission and the Super Bowl. Also, somebody named Kardashian got divorced or something? Ring a bell? Source – adage.com
