| Tracking shares |
For online publications, it’s useful to know how people share links to articles and news via outlets such as Twitter. How does an article go from publication to viral? Does one person with a lot of Twitter followers share a link, or is getting lots of individuals to tweet the key?
In studying what people were sharing online, the New York times R&D Lab (doesn’t exist now) created Project Cascade, one of the first interactive tools to analyze how stories spread on social media. It was incredibly useful, helping the Times identify what strategies worked getting pieces to “go viral” and identifying “influencers”, but it was also beautiful and hypnotizing to watch. Importantly for a visualization, it’s stood the test of much of a decade and still looks stunning.
“ This first-of-its-kind tool links browsing behavior on a site to sharing activity to construct a detailed picture of how information propagates through the social media space. While initially applied to New York Times stories and information, the tool and its underlying logic may be applied to any publisher or brand interested in understanding how its messages are shared. “
Created by : Jer Thorp, Mark Hansen, and Jake Porway (NYT R&D Lab)
jmj2196 (Jesfae John)