A Year in Sharing: Hot Topics, Social Trends, and Major Online Behavioral Shifts in 2018

Our 2018 Year In Review recaps some of the best and worst moments of this unforgettable year. We dug into our vast global data set of intent signals to identify current trends and unique developments within the evolving ShareThis network. Each passing year brings new surprises and new learnings. Let’s take a look at what we were able to uncover.  

Mountains of Data

In 2018, ShareThis captured 2 billion shares, 12 billion clicks on shared content, and 29 billion searches. This social activity contributed to a whopping 125 billion page views globally!

Platform of Choice

Mobile is still where people spend the majority of their time, with 71% of all sharing activities coming from smartphones. Tablet has fallen out of favor, dipping 7% over the course of the year. No surprises here, but if you’re not yet optimizing content for mobile, you’re doing it wrong!

Social Media Channel Preference

A Heated Midterm Election

U.S. politics remained center to the conversation in 2018. The heated midterm elections proved to be a critical time for Republicans and Democrats to shift the political landscape in their favor, as shown by the Texas Senate race. Negative sentiment around Beto jumped 13% in 2018, while positive sentiment around Ted fell 17%. The battle rages on in a divided country. 

Texas Senate Race

The Cultural Moment of The Year

The Royal Wedding between Meghan Markle and Prince Harry carried powerful cultural significance and packed an emotional punch. The live broadcast drew close attention from millions across the globe. Take a peek at what sparked people’s interest on that important day. 

ROYAL WEDDING

Brands in The Spotlight

New year, new scandals. Facebook, Tesla, and Nike were three companies plagued by controversy in 2018. What does our U.S. sentiment data tell us?

The Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal shocked the world, leading to rising concerns and tighter government regulations around personal data privacy. This led to both a 16% drop in the brand’s positive sentiment and a 6% rise in negative sentiment.

Tesla experienced a painful year. Missed production targets, nasty lawsuits, and plummeting stock prices all caused consumers to lose trust in the automaker. As a result, negative sentiment around the brand roughly doubled in 2018, with positive sentiment dropping 7%.

Nike’s controversial ad featuring Colin Kaepernick triggered a social media outrage and even prompted critics to destroy personal Nike apparel in protest; nonetheless, Nike continued to hit record sales through the year. The divisive campaign caused neutral sentiment to drop by 11%, but positive sentiment jumped 8% compared to a mere 3% rise in negative sentiment.

The Year of Diversity in Film

Superhero films continue to conquer both online shares and the box office, but 2018 was also an important year for inclusive representation and diversity in movies. Let’s hope that doesn’t change!

The Gold Medalist

Russia World Cup topped our list as the biggest and most engaging sporting event of the year, but don’t forget that the Philly Eagles also won their first ever Super Bowl championship against the New England Patriots. 

2018 FIFA WORLD CUP

2018 OLYMPIC WINTER GAMES

SUPER BOWL LII

Philanthropy on The Rise

California wildfires and Atlantic hurricanes continued to devastate the U.S. in 2018, but the nation came together more than ever before to lend a helping hand. Across our network, we saw 1.8x more shares in the U.S. around charity, donations, and disaster-relief compared to the previous year. 

Continue to leverage our data and actionable insights to fully understand the current changes in the broader social landscape. We are excited to see what 2019 has in store for us!

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*Boomberg: Twitter Plunges Most in Four Years on Drop in Monthly Users (July 2018)