Dark social

This is a different view of the significance of Facebook and the social web that I only just noticed, by Alex Madrigal of the Atlantic. In summary:

1. The sharing you see on sites like Facebook and Twitter is the tip of the 'social' iceberg. We are impressed by its scale because it's easy to measure.

2. But most sharing is done via dark social means like email and IM that are difficult to measure.

3. According to new data on many media sites, 69% of social referrals came from dark social. 20% came from Facebook.

We should rewrite the history of the web, he says. People have shared ever since its early days. What Facebook does is provide a way to archive and monetize that sharing.