TIP OF THE MONTH: Sharing is the new advertising!

August 23, 2010 | Posted by Carolyn Pikoulas
Think about your last few posts on your Facebook or Twitter account or the last news story you've e-mailed to your friends. What were the reasons that you shared the information? Was it a funny video, an inspiring story, or an interesting news article? A revolutionary shift has taken place in the way we consume and share information. A recent article from Mashable.com states that 75% of information consumed online is now read through shared feeds from social networking sites or through e-mail. Social network sites like Facebook and Twitter are now becoming personalized news feeds.

Below are a few excerpts from the article...

The shift toward personalization of news is in many ways a response to the problem of noise. Jay Rosen, New York University journalism professor and media critic said that "there's no such thing as information overload, there's only filter failure. The social stream is a means to filter success. Relying on friends and a personal network to filter the news and point out the best stuff solves that problem."

After having a presence on Facebook for more than two years, NPR decided to take a closer look at its more than 1 million Facebook fans with a survey. Andy Carvin, senior strategist at NPR, said he had a certain hypotheses: Do people really use their social network to get news? After more than 40,000 responses to the survey, 74.6% said that Facebook was a major way in which they received news and information from NPR, and 72.3% said they "expect" their friends to share links to interesting information and news stories with them online.