<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"T. and F. They don\u2019t stand for \u2018true\u2019 or \u2018false\u2019 anymore. They stand for Twitter and Facebook. They\u2019re in the corner of every webpage we visit, alongside \u2018in\u2019 for LinkedIn, \u2018su\u2019 for StumbleUpon, and the universally recognized envelope, which represents the archaic sharing system we call \u2018email\u2019 - which still accounts for 17% of all Internet sharing.\r\n\r\nWhen we\u2019re surfing the web, we see something we like and click one or all of these sharing buttons without thinking twice. But if you\u2019re a marketer, or a webmaster, or a blogger \u2013 anyone that has a vested interest in how many hits are coming in; sharing isn\u2019t just the new American pastime \u2013 there are dollars at stake. And one company is attempting to help publishers better understand how encouraging sharing can increase profits.\r\n\r\nThis is the goal of ShareThis, the largest platform for sharing and influence across the web, which aims to help publishers strengthen their advertising by understanding the people who are receiving their content via shares. Sharing accounts for 31% of site referral traffic, nearly half of what search engines account for. Analyzing not who is sharing, but who they\u2019re sharing it with gives publishers the ammo they need to secure advertisers that will profit from partnering with them.\r\n\r\nShareThis CEO Tim Schigel explains it as such: If I send a link about DIY furniture restoration to my cousin Susie, it says more about her than it does about me. As Susie\u2019s cousin and \u2018search agent\u2019, I\u2019m targeting her better than any advertiser could. If publishers understand the people who are receiving their links from sharing, they can secure more effective advertising. By tracking the path of clicks, ShareThis can aggregate pertinent information about the publisher's audience, thus enabling them to broker more meaningful relationships between publishers and relevant advertisers. Eventually, ShareThis will be able to assign a dollar value to every share.\r\n\r\nOne website has already nailed down their share-to-dollar algorithm \u2013 Eventbrite. As Marketing Director Tamara Mendelsohn puts it, ecommerce isn\u2019t something you\u2019d inherently share with your network \u2013 you don\u2019t post the $300 shoes you just purchased on your Facebook wall (or you do, if you\u2019re gaudy). Enter social commerce. The nature of events is that they\u2019re social \u2013 you want your friends to come along, you want to hear feedback from people who\u2019ve attended a similar event, you want to know who\u2019s already purchased tickets.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nAdd to that an interface that encourages both event organizers and ticket purchasers to post events to their social networks, and you have one of the most successful social commerce campaigns on the Internet. Facebook is now Eventbrite\u2019s #1 referral site, surpassing Google and netting Eventbrite 11 clicks and $2.53 per share. How they got the number: \u201CWe track the total ticket volume that is driven by each sharing mechanism and divide by the total number of shares that are initiated through that mechanism on our platform. In reality the numbers are probably higher, as some people will just directly cut and paste links to share. We can\u2019t track that, so we know our numbers are conservative.\u201D\r\n\r\nOf course, not every social site can be expected to provide a ROI like Facebook (an Eventbrite share on Twitter only nets 0.43). In the case of Eventbrite, this is because Facebook (and Facebook friends) are a lot more localized \u2013 your Twitter followers are likely to have a greater geographic spread than your Facebook friends. There\u2019s also that whole \u201CFacebook having 500 million users\u201D part of the equation.\r\n\r\nThere\u2019s been an undercurrent of dissent toward Facebook in the past few months; stemming from early adopters who claim it\u2019s \u2018jumped the shark\u2019. The unfortunate truth is that it\u2019s the most effective social network if you\u2019re trying to garner clicks on your shares \u2013 whether you\u2019re trying to share the cutest kitten video ever or an article you've mandated 'required reading' for anyone who wants to associate with you.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nOf 70 billion shares examined in the ShareThis study, 38% of clicks on shared content came from Facebook (Twitter was only responsible for 11%). If you don\u2019t use social networks to promote your projects or your personal interests, feel free to deactivate that Facebook profile. But if you have even the tiniest incentive to reach an audience, it may be a while before Facebook becomes as irrelevant as some of us wish it were.\r\n\r\nWhere and how do you share content on the Internet?"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2011/06/11/the-science-of-sharing/screen-shot-2011-06-10-at-12-23-04-pm/>