Archive Digger

ShareThis, using tracking codes, tallies who is sending what links to whom and through which channels. The information collected helps publishers determine which topics lend most to sharing—fashion stories are passed along more often than pieces about vacations, say. It also tells them which social-networking sites bring in the most traffic, which readers share the most with friends and who, among those readers, are bringing back the highest number of clicks. The importance of analyzing sharing and influence data will grow as companies such as Facebook, Twitter and Google Buzz continue to reshape the Internet, changing the way people get their daily news and hear about emerging products. Rather than reading the newspaper first thing in the morning, consumers are turning to their friends to get news feeds and even to conduct Internet searches.