Facebook beating Twitter at getting people to share

Facebook is significantly more effective than other social networks as a platform for sharing content, claims content distributor GoViral.
 
It has revealed that the number of shares and subsequent actions such as commenting is almost five times higher on Facebook than on Twitter.
GoViral said for video content it distributed in the third quarter of 2010, the average number of interactions on Facebook was 5.64 per 1,000 views, while Twitter resulted in just 0.75.
Its research found that since Facebook introduced the ’like’ button, which allows users to post links on their news feeds to content they enjoyed on third-party sites, the interactions with video content increased dramatically.
In Q1, Facebook had in 1.19 interactions per 1,000 video views, doubling to 2.27 in Q2 once the ’like’ feature was introduced.
Similarly, research by YouTube and Ipsos MORI found that 11% of consumers had watched a video or ad about a product or brand on YouTube, and a similar amount (7%) had ’liked’ a branded video on Facebook.
Nick Roveta, product director at GoViral, said the ease of interaction on Facebook encourages longer-term relationships through ’likes’.
“On Facebook and external sites, it’s one click to ’like’ something. Although on Twitter you can retweet links to encourage sharing of the video, it doesn’t invite other interactions,” he said.
This month, P&G-owned grooming brand Gillette launched a campaign across social media sites to see if the public prefer clean-shaven or bearded men, which includes video content.
James Nunn, Gillette’s brand communications manager, said the differences between the sites meant brand usage had to depend on product and campaign.

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