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November 19, 2012

Report Shows Copy and Paste Still Most Popular Way of Sharing on the Internet

By Oliver VanDervoort, Contributing Writer

In the world of social media, users sharing websites and stories are the bread and butter of the business. Facebook has relied on people sharing information through their site using the like button. Facebook (News - Alert) is hardly the only site that uses some form of sharing in order to get the word out about their site. Sites like Yelp, community restaurant rating sites use sharing applications specifically to link up to Facebook in order to allow users to see what others think of one location.



 If a new report is true, then those sharing links aren’t really doing the companies much good. Market research firm Tynt says that when it comes to sharing content, good old “copy and paste” is still the most popular way to share content.


 
Image via Shutterstock

According to the report by Tynt, 82 percent of all content sharing online is still done by sending links by copy and pasting. That means that despite all the huge advances that the Internet has seen in the last decade, the vast majority of users still prefer highlighting text (whether just a block of text or a link) to their computer’s clipboard and then pasting that text into e-mails, blogs and Facebook postings. The numbers show that people are still “copy and pasting” 4.5 times more than they are clicking a share button, a statistic that will most likely surprise people who use the social media sites on a regular basis.

"The exponential rise of content sharing is often incorrectly attributed to sharing buttons on a page," said Greg Levitt, GM of Tynt's Publisher Solutions and co-founder of 33Across. "In reality, content sharing is caused by a far more universal user behavior: copy & paste -- the most intuitive way people curate and share the exact content that they want across the web. It's surprising, but the old highlight and right click is more popular than ever."

Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO Miami 2013, Jan 29- Feb. 1 in Miami, Florida.  Stay in touch with everything happening at ITEXPO (News - Alert). Follow us on Twitter.




Edited by Brooke Neuman
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