ShareThis reports that it is now.
How do website readers prefer to share stories they find with friends? According to the company behind the widely used sharing widget ShareThis, after emailing a link, the most popular method of sharing is now Facebook. The numbers are interesting - but there are also some big caveats to keep in mind.
In our enthusiasm for Web 2.0 style tools, many blog publishers may forget just how popular sharing by email is. It's clearly the favorite method. Email sharing does tend to be one to one however, having items shared on Digg or Facebook has the potential to reach many, many more people.
The big surprise here, though, is that Facebook and MySpace have emerged as hugely popular ways to share items from off-site. Have they found greater mainstream success in the relatively short time these sites have supported item sharing than dedicated social bookmarking sites have in the years they have been online? It appears that may be the case.
We found these numbers via Amit Agarwal's blog, which is always a great place to discover new things about the web.
When publishers add the ShareThis system to their websites, they can choose which services to include buttons for. It's an important detail to take into consideration and knowing which services are most popular can help make this decision. Here at RWW we don't use ShareThis, we use another service called AddThis. Looking at the numbers from ShareThis, though, would lead us to believe that sharing by email needs to be added and sharing by Facebook needs to be given higher billing in our widget. Other sites might make other decisions based on this data. GigaOm, for example, doesn't offer sharing by Facebook at all - something our friend Om might want to change.
A few things to take into consideration, however, include the following:
None the less, the take away here for us is this: email, Facebook and MySpace are very popular ways for people to share things online. Publishers neglect them at our own risk.
Comments
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Thanks for that data point.
Posted by: Brad Nickel
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August 11, 2008 9:59 AM
The ShareThis stats reflect my experience with social media, since I have noticed more traffic from email services than other social networks. Email can be one-to-one sharing, but sometimes I have noticed my posts getting submitted to listservs and message boards.
Posted by: John | August 11, 2008 10:13 AM
Shows why strong email functionality is still important. It's a distribution mechanism with immediacy. Social bookmarking is not necessarily a method for direct distribution. Syndicated feeds do help to create a form of direct distribution for social bookmarking services. But they do not always have the same immediacy.
Social networks like MySpace and Facebook use sharing to notify people of items that people have posted. Those items appear in the newsfeed, which people view all day to see what their friends are doing. It's direct and immediate.
A lot of learning lessons here - thanks for the post Marshall and also to Amit for being on the story. :-)
Posted by: Alex Williams | August 11, 2008 10:21 AM
Pardon me in advance for slightly digressing: doesn't it frustrate you that your posts end up being shared/read/commented elsewhere? Wouldn't it be only fair (and I think that I've seen this on a site, once) that on whichever social sites your posts (like others' for that matter) are commented yours, this blog, could benefit and at least get a carbon copy of it?
Posted by: lelapin
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August 11, 2008 10:28 AM
Thanks for the info. I wonder if and when facebook will replace emailing and also it would be interesting to have it divided into age groups and see how the results shift.
Posted by: Yael Beeri | August 11, 2008 10:32 AM
I read this differently. This is just how people share _using the widget_ and as such it is no surprise that email and facebook come first.
Both - email especially and facebook to a certain degree - are a pain to share otherwhise, while sharing of links on digg / delicious / friendfeed and alike are 'easy'.
Have a look at your own browser / bookmark list - i assume you do have an extension for delicious installed, as well as stumble upon, likely for digg. At least you have a bookmark for sharing in these often used services with more functionality.
Now, do you have a email mail bookmarklet or a facebook share bookmarklet? I doubt it.
Btw if anyone has a good suggestion for a good email this tool I'd appreciate that. ;)
Posted by: Nicole Simon
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August 11, 2008 10:43 AM
Unfortunately, social bookmarking via Facebook keeps everything in a closed network. It's not exactly social if only people inside Facebook can access these links.
Posted by: Glenn Batuyong
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August 11, 2008 11:15 AM
Remember all that "email is dead" crap? Turns out it's still way in front of the other 2.0 services as a link sharing tool. lol.
Posted by: chris | August 11, 2008 11:24 AM
I use Facebook from time to time, but I would always generally use email to share something with another person, as it's simply quicker for me.
Then I'd reach for friendfeed, or for more 'newsy' stuff, social|median. I'd also likely use StumbleUpon. To share links I will often use Twitter, as it's so quick and easy.
Posted by: Eyebee | August 11, 2008 1:03 PM
i'd agree that email is my #1 way to share links. multiply.com is my #2 means of sharing. facebook? i think i've tried sharing one thing, once. but i received much less chatter about the link there than i would on multiply. multiply's fantastic infrastructure wins out when it comes to wanting to post a link and then talk about it.
@pascal
i like the CC idea. but if your post is shared 100 times and each share receives 25 comments, that would be a lot to keep up with. especially if those discussions end up meandering around (just like a real life conversation) on some people's links to your post.
Posted by: barefootmeg | August 12, 2008 5:45 AM
Interesting research. It seems like people has forgot about the e-mail as a way of sharing to earlier. I mean web master, not ordinary users who still stick to this according to the research.
Posted by: Mike Borozdin | August 12, 2008 7:08 PM
The continued popularity of email simply illustrates that people still don't take an active role in decreasing less selective use of email. Stuff you don't need emailed to you still gets emailed to you, and we are still emailing stuff that doen't need immediate attention.
Facebook as number 2 makes sense, as most people have more contacts on Facebook then the other services. I think this just builds a better case for Friendfeed, which will pull inn all your junk, which you can then post to facebook with friendfeed
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