Sharing on Facebook More Valuable Than On Twitter

According to research done by Eventbrite, sharing on Facebook is five times more valuable than sharing on Twitter.

Eventbrite mined all this data over the past several months, analyzing how sharing an event through social media translated into ticket sales. On average, sharing an event on Facebook translates to $2.52 of ticket sales. On Twitter? Just $0.43. Sharing through email took second place at $2.34, and even LinkedIn topped Twitter at $0.90.

The great disparity between Facebook and Twitter isn’t surprising. According to a recent poll, users of Facebook have physically met more than 88% of their friends; on Twitter, users have not physically met 48.2% of their followers.

Full story: Facebook Is Worth $2.52, Twitter Only 43 Cents: Study | Fast Company.

This reinforces my simple model of social media in which I said that Facebook is for networking with those you already know, while Twitter is better for reaching a brand new audience.

Not only that, but in another FastCompany article, they show that Twitter click-through rates are far higher than Facebook. While you might think this would lead to a higher value, it really just speaks to the fact that link-sharing is huge on Twitter  and people are often there to gather information, sometimes using it as an RSS alternative. But that can lead to information overload, diluting its effect,  whereas I would guess that Facebook users are a little more conservative in their link-sharing. Since Facebookers have a closer connection to their network, I would speculate they don’t want to spam their friends and so share stuff they feel to be more genuinely of interest to their social network. Since people trust their friends, they are probably more likely to take action on something that is shared on Facebook.

Have you noticed any trends like this in your own social media efforts? How might this information affect what and how you share on Twitter, Facebook and other networks?