Two reasons Facebook will not replace the word “share” the way Google has done with “search”: 1) It doesn’t roll off the tongue as easily. 2) Facebook doesn’t dominate sharing the way Google owns search. While Google holds 65% of search engine market share, Facebook only represents 38% of online shares that result in clicks, according to a study released by sharing platform ShareThis and communications company Starcom MediaVest Group on June 2.
Turns out, the sharing marketplace more closely resembles the smartphone market than the search engine market. Second to Facebook’s 38% share comes email at 17% and Twitter at 11% (a melting pot of bookmarks, blogs and etc. generate the leftover 34%). The important thing here is that these stats relate to shares that result in clicks. Facebook may very well get Googly when accounting for unclicked shares, but that’s trees tumbling in empty forests.
More surprising, Twitter’s beats Facebook in average number of clicks per share, 4.8 for Twitter versus Facebook’s 4.3. Email loses out at 1.7 clicks, but that’s about right considering email is one-to-one communication whereas Facebook and Twitter are one-to-one-hundred.
The study also correlated its findings to identify share groups. Apparently people who share religion-related content are also broadcasting government- and law-related content. The other groups are more obvious, but still interesting:
- Business, Financial services, Investments, Employment, Education
- Arts, Entertainment, Music, Video Games, Shop Electronics, Technology
- Shopping Beauty, Shop Clothing, Shop Food Drink, Shop Beauty
- Real Estate, Shop Home Garden, Automotive, Science, Travel
- Parenting, Health, Health Fitness, Shop Pets, Sports
