Our final social rankings of 2014 show the sites that made themselves known on Facebook throughout the year, and give an indication as to what 2015 might look like.
After the huge upset we saw in November’s Facebook rankings, things steadied themselves somewhat in the final month of 2014, but there were still plenty of developments among the biggest 25 Facebook publishers. In December:
- PlayBuzz remained the most-shared site, Huffington Post the biggest overall,
- Elite Daily, Conservative Tribune and MTV entered the top 10 overall,
- CNN returned to the rankings at number 23.
According to the latest data from Spike, these were the top ten most-shared English language sites on Facebook last month:
PlayBuzz maintained their lead at the top of the most-shared chart, with over 8.6 million shares of their content in December. They again had many of the most-shared stories of the month, all of which were quizzes. It seems as though there’s little sign of the quiz craze abating on Facebook, one year on from when we noticed the first wave.
Overall, the Huffington Post remained in pole position, despite an overall fall-off in interactions, along with second-placed BuzzFeed. The last five publishers on the top ten most-shared chart all clustered together closely in December, with between 2.09 million and 2.24 million shares apiece.
It was a slower month for more traditional publishers, with the New York Times, the Guardian, the Mail Online and the BBC.
Perhaps it was down to the holiday season that there was a not insignificant fall-off in engagement for many publishers, allowing sites such as Elite Daily, the Conservative Tribune and MTV to all enter the top ten.
It was a brilliant month for MTV, who moved up to their highest position yet, in ninth overall. That’s up from 22nd place last month, possibly the biggest single month jump we’ve ever recorded. Although they were admittedly helped by a weaker than usual month from many of their closest competitors, they still managed to add almost 3 million interactions to their overall total. Their most-shared story last month had over 140,000 shares.
Elite Daily had similar success, moving up to seventh overall, their highest position to date.
The Mirror also retained their place in the overall top 10, while the Conservative Tribune jumped to eight overall.
Outside the top ten, CNN made a return to the rankings, placing at 24th overall, with just over 6.58 million interactions. CNN have just launched a new website, and claim that it puts mobile and social ‘at its core’. We’ve seen boosts in social engagement for sites who have re-designed to be more social-oriented in the past, so we’ll be keeping an eye out on whether or not CNN’s new effort brings them any help.
Unsurprisingly, many of the biggest stories of the month had a heavy seasonal focus – here’s a sample (click for bigger).
More oddball inclusions in the most-engaged stories list included a Wall Street Journal article on science and God (361,000 interactions), President Obama’s decision to grant US federal workers a day off on December 26 (286,000 interactions), and a Vanity Fair listicle demonstrating ‘how Emma Watson left Harry Potter behind her in 2014‘ (253,000 shares).
The Most-shared UK Stories of 2014
Last week, we collaborated with journalism.co.uk to find the ten most-shared UK stories of the year on Facebook and Twitter. The Facebook rankings showed an impressive string of hits for the Mail Online, with the Guardian, Independent, Express and Mirror all also featuring, and the BBC a noticeable absentee. To see the full list, with links, head over to their site.
With 2014 now out of the way, publishers will be looking to see what 2015 might bring in terms of reach and new readers. If you’re looking for tips on how best to approach this with your own publishing, check out our top social strategy tips for 2015, which we published on the blog last week.
See below for the top 25 sites and their full stats. Feel free to email us at contact at newswhip dot com for more granular data. To learn more about how we compile this data, please see our methodology.
Interested in This Data?
We compiled our data using Spike, which tracks the stories, videos, and other content that people are sharing and engaging with in real time. It’s used by some of the world’s leading digital newsrooms and content creators.
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NewsWhip gathers its data from Spike, our professional platform that monitors the social distribution of news. While we strive for complete coverage, sometimes we will miss some content for some publishers. If it looks to you like we’re missing something or have our numbers wrong, drop us a line.
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