Pinterest emerged as the fastest-growing platform for content sharing based on the first quarterly Sharing Trends report released by ShareThis, a privately held online content distribution service provider.
During the third quarter, ShareThis found that the amount of content shared by people with their colleagues, families, or friends increased rapidly on Pinterest with a 19.22% growth rate, outperforming LinkedIn Corp (NYSE:LNKD) and Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) with 15.11% and 14.78% growth rates, respectively. The number of users sharing content on Twitter declined by -7.6%.
ShareThis emphasized in the report that Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) and Twitter still dominate content sharing, as the companies collectively represent 75% of all sharing online. However, Pinterest is challenging the leadership of the social network giant and the popular micro-blogging site in content sharing, given its fast growth rate. Linkedln is also a significant competitor.
Pinterest and e-mail are almost at the same level
The report also showed that Pinterest and e-mail are at almost the same level in content sharing online. The company nearly overtook e-mail as the third most popular channel.
Kurt Abrahamson, chief executive officer of ShareThis emphasized that businesses will be able to benefit from their social media campaigns by understanding how consumers use different platforms.
“The more advertisers understand how consumers are using all social channels — beyond Facebook and Twitter — the more effectively they can use social media to augment and improve campaigns,” said Abrahamson.
According to him, business owners will be able to facilitate consumer awareness regarding their brands online by adding the share buttons on their website. Users visiting their sites will be able to share any content easily through a certain social media channel by just clicking the digital icons.
Abrahamson recommended that the best place for the share button is under the content headers, and avoid placing it on top or at the bottom of the browser.
Facebook has the highest growth rate
ShareThis analyzed the sharing behaviors of millions of consumers across more than 120 social media channels.
Separately, a recent report from Shareaholic, a social analytics firm revealed Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) has the highest growth rate in terms of mobile traffic referrals over the past 12 months followed by Pinterest and Twitter.
