Facebook’s Biggest Publishers In January 2015

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The Facebook ranking of 2015 still provides essential and fascinating data as ever.

At the end of 2014, the hierarchy of Facebook news publishers slowly shifted in transition. Many big names like the Huffington Post and BuzzFeed were struggling with newcomers like PlayBuzz, while social-oriented niche sites like Movie Pilot were snapping up interactions further down the charts, often at the expense of more established names.

Recent survey concluded that PlayBuzz has become the best newcomer of the year for 2014, while The Huffington Post took overall best. Below is the list of top ten Facebook publishers for January, ranked by shares only:

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Once again, PlayBuzz cleaned up in terms of overall shares and top stories. They had nine of the top ten most-engaged stories on Facebook last month, with their biggest (‘What Was Your Past Life According To Your Memories?‘) getting over 1.9 million interactions. The article has brought their total shares to over 10 million.

When PlayBuzz talk about their belief in ‘playful content’, it might seem difficult to believe that quizzes could have such enduring appeal to readers. The thousands of Facebook comments beneath that post suggests otherwise. Month after month, these quizzes are mopping up engagement on News Feeds.

However, there was also serious share growth for The Huffington Post and BuzzFeed during January. In terms of overall interactions, the Huffington Post remain in the lead, with over 52 million, a jump of around 10 million since December. BuzzFeed are also in a pretty good place, with a jump of over 5 million total interactions since the end of 2014.

The Mirror Online continues to grow up the charts, this month coming in at number seven overall, their best performance to date. Newly-acquired Elite Daily slips from 7th to 20th overall. However, with new owners the Mail Online coming in with over 13.8 million interactions, the two sites are now formidable features in the social space. It remains to be seen what, if any, effect their joint ownership has on content strategy. Further down the list, the Conservative Tribune drops a few places to 22nd, from 8th.

In terms of stories, a look at a spreadsheet of the most-engaged pieces of the month certainly show that the adage ‘If it bleeds, it leads’, certainly does not apply for social readers, on Facebook anyway. There were few hard news stories amongst the top 150 stories, but plenty of wacky and intriguing stories and lists. The Huffington Post recently announced that they will be launching a new section of its site dedicated to covering “the stories of people and communities doing amazing things, overcoming great odds and coming up with solutions to the very real challenges they face”. Looking at the themes of their most popular stories already, it looks as though this new section will be very popular with the Huffington Post’s readers.

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Huffington Post’s most shared stories on January 2015

That shouldn’t be all that surprising, as Facebook primarily serves as a form of entertainment for many of its users. Another fascinating area of this data is the proportion of interactions that happen on the network, as opposed to on site. Publishers are experimenting with the idea of hosting content directly on Facebook, while social news distributor NowThis last week completely did away with on-site content, instead telling visitors ‘today the news lives where you live’.

Higher share rates come from PlayBuzz, whose readers need to complete a quiz to get a personalised result, and news sites like the BBC, as shown in the chart below:

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