2013 Year in Review: Pinterest Grow 50% and Android Dominate Mobile Sharing

If you have ever shared some content from around the web via social channels, chances are you have syndicated content using AddThis. AddThis personalizes the web with a combination of easy-to-use content engagement tools, APIs and other services. Since their technology is used by over 14 million domains worldwide to power social sharing, increase engagement, boost traffic and provide behavioral insights, it is probably fair to say, that the firm understands a thing or two about consumer social sharing behavior. Addthis has chosen to demonstrate this expertise in the form of its 2013 Year in Review. Greg Cypes on their company blog writes:

“Even though 2013 lacked an Olympics or Presidential election we still saw social activity increase 32% across the web across our 14M websites and 1.5B unique users”.

The death of Nelson Mandela was still a global mourning event, with 2.3million shares on December 5th.

Sharing via Facebook still dominates, however it has declined year-over-year by 11 percent globally. Teenagers have been deserting the network in droves this year, and this may have something to do with it.  Meanwhile, Pinterest holds a smaller stake of global content engagement but is growing much faster than other social networks at 50 percent year-over-year. Additionally, Twitter saw a small gain in social shares of three percent year-over-year.

Taking a global look at sharing, Brazil (46 percent) and India (48 percent) are seeing the strongest year-over-year growth in social sharing and overall content engagement among the BRIC countries. The picture for China (29 percent), however, is constrained due to restrictions on internet access.

This year, Android continued its dominance of mobile sharing. Android devices represented 57 percent of all mobile sharing and content engagement globally. This is up 300 percent over the last two years vs. an iOS gain of 143 percent over the same period. With Christmas come and gone, two of the most desired gifts, the Xbox One and Sony’s PS4, sparked a new console war, and while both Microsoft’s Xbox One and Sony’s PS4 are currently capturing the imagination of lucky gamers everywhere, PS4 is winning the social battle, driving 46 percent more content engagement (social shares, address bar shares, searching, emailing, printing) when compared to Xbox One.

“The unique insights from our 2013 Year in Review reflect a fast changing and dynamic environment when it comes to sharing and content engagement,” said Rich Harris, CEO, AddThis. Check out their infographic below for further insights.