Facebook isn't for friends, it's for families.
Facebook just released the most shared articles on Facebook in 2011. It's interesting to look into the collective consciousness of 800 Million people. I love that Facebook is sharing this kind of data and am very curious what other kind of data they have and what can we get access to.
Here's some really quick observations that jumped out to me. Key takeaway, nothing beats a good story and families are more important than brands (there is hope for the World).
Of the top 40 news articles shared on Facebook in 2011:
- 15 - Family in some way (parents, siblings, mom, dad, sister, children, babies)
- 5 - Deaths (2 Jobs, Navy SEAL, Ryan Dunn, Bin Laden)
- 4 - Animals (2 dogs, 1 crocodile, 1 pets, 0 cats)
- 4 - The Japan earthquake and Tsunami
- 3 - The supposed new zodiac signs.
- 3 - Steve Jobs
- 2 - Sports (neither was actually about the sport but about Penn State and allegations of racism #24 & 39)
- 1 - The number of stories about getting a job (I would have expected this to be much, much higher.)
- 1 - Politics
- 1 - Facebook's redesign
- 0 - Excluding the death of Steve Jobs not a single story was about a product or brand.
Multimedia?
- 12 - Included video. CNN did this particularly well
- 2 - Included slideshows
- 1 - With an "infographic" and it was really just a graph. #23
- 1 - HuffPo post that actually had any multimedia. (No time for images or videos when you're plagiarizing.)
Clearly the aggregators (Yahoo and HuffPo) are winning the sharing battle.
- 12 - Yahoo
- 8 - HuffPo
- 10 - CNN (3 of the top 5)
- 6 - NYT
- 3 - Washington Post
- 1 - WSJ (How's that pay wall working out?)
You may think from the stats above that moms are reading parenting articles on Yahoo with some serious news thrown in from the major news outlets but what surprised me was how well CNN does at link baiting headlines, look at articles 3-5 & 7.
Cats may rule the internet but babies and dogs rule Facebook.
Pulling on the heart strings works very well on Facebook. See 5,6,7 & 18.
But what struck me the most was that Facebook isn't really for friends, it's for families. I don't know if it's because of the recession or what, but family related articles outperformed everything else by a long shot.Similar Posts:
- Content Hierarchy And The Importance Of Effort
- Social Networking is at an Inflection Point with Exponential Growth in Sharing.
- Data is the New Creative. Marketing Nerds Unite!
# of Comments 2
# of Comments 4
# of Comments 9