Fun fact of the day: Social networks are by far the biggest traffic-referrers to Daily Kos outside the site itself. Increasingly. For better or worse, more and more people are choosing to read their news off social networks rather than on news sites themselves. Don't believe me? Check out what
Pew Research reported in 2012:
Facebook users spent an average of 423 minutes each on the site in December. By contrast, a PEJ analysis of Nielsen Net View data puts the average time on a top 25 news site at just under 12 minutes per month.
And I'd take a guess that the numbers have only trended in the same direction in the last year or so since that study was published. We've certainly seen that trend here at Daily Kos, anyway, even for a site that is—compared to other news sites—incredibly community-based.
Why does this matter? Well, it means that, like it or not, sharing stories on social networks is the game nowadays. If you write/read stories that you think deserve eyeballs and eardrums, sharing it outside the site is the best hope for an audience.
So aren't you just dying to know what stories posted here at Daily Kos were most passed around the interwebs last week? Well, take a leap beneath the tiny orange cloud and find out.
*Stories highlighted in orange were written by front-pagers. Gray indicates community-produced content.
FACEBOOK:
As you can deduce from the orange-to-gray ratio, like the two previous weeks, the majority of these top-shared stories were community-produced. Four users had double hits: Hunter, kos, Leslie Salzillo and cc. Superb!
Side note on cc's posts: Both links were actually to the Daily Kos mobile site, which is something we don't see too often. So those posts were probably mostly shared on mobile devices rather than computers.
A diary from the previous week lingered on the top 20 list. That would be #18, a diary scribed by the now-banned user obamalover20122. The diary was passed around like crazy the following week because of its controversial content. This brings up an interesting point that Catte Nappe offered in comments:
Solely as an example, it does leave us with the interesting reality that as far as spread on social media goes, the spotlight may shine on our best work, our worst work, our most infamous work, etc. Anyone can share or tweet, not just our friends and supporters.
An excellent reminder. Stories that drive traffic don't always reflect the level of quality of a story—mainly it just includes work that most provoked reaction from its readers, whatever that reaction may be.
Moving on to Reddit, our second-biggest referrer this week.
REDDIT:
Reddit LOVES community-produced content. Last week all top 10 Reddit hits were community-produced, and this week it's 8 out of 10. And actually, even though #5 is technically written by staff (Barbara Morrill), it's also from 2005 (WTF?) so ... yeah. Definitely an anomaly. Like I mentioned last week, sometimes diaries will be recycled months or years later, especially on Reddit or Tumblr, sites where stories tend to enjoy a longer shelf-life than the quick-moving river that is Facebook and Twitter.
Speak of the devil!
TWITTER:
Unlike Reddit, Twitter tends to favor front-page content. Last week 7 out of 10 stories were written by front pagers.
Feel free to fire away questions for us social media peeps (me and Jen Hayden) in comments. And if you are a social networky type, come find us on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Google Plus.
As always, thanks for writing such an array of marvelous stuff that people are compelled to share. And keep in mind sharing stories via social media is just one additional way to support your follow community members beyond the usual tips and recs.