CNN has been researching how news articles are shared through social media, identifying different motivations for sharing and the increased benefit for advertisers who feature on recommended news pages. The ‘Pownar’ research was conducted over two months with 2,300 consumers using tracking and surveying. It also used eyetracking and biometrics to measure readers’ engagement with stories. The most influential news-sharers, and the group which shared 87 percent of the stories in the survey, only accounted for 27 percent of all the users – tallying with previous definitions of a minority of highly active web web users that contribute a majority of content online. The big social networks – Facebook Twitter, YouTube and MySpace, accounted for 43 percent of all links shared, email 30 percent, SMS 15 percent and instant messenger 12 percent. Researchers identified three primary motivations for sharing, which differed around the world. In Europe and North America, users had more altruistic reasons for sharing stories that would be useful to friends or family, European users tend to share more work-related stories and Asia-Pacific readers were more likely to ‘status’ broadcast – share things that underline or reinforce their own knowledge and identity. The majority of shared content, around 65 percent, was major current news stories, 19 percent was breaking news and 16 percent was made up of watercooler funnies or quirky news. The most commonly recommended content was national and international news around human-interest stories and money, as well as science and technology news and “visually spectacular” stories. Researchers described the act of sharing as one with “an underlying message of the sharer imparting knowledge”.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2010/oct/07/cnn-recommendation-social-news
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