• Bit.ly, Wednesday, September 7, 2011 12:54 PM

Even in a social content, it turns out, YouTube appears to be a far more effective platform for "broadcasting" content online. According to a new study from link-shortening service Bit.ly, most links -- published on Facebook or Twitter -- stay fresh for about three hours, while YouTube keeps them fresh for closer to seven hours! Bit.ly evaluates the freshness -- or "persistence" -- of a link by calculating its "half life," i.e., "the amount of time at which this link will receive half of the clicks it will ever receive after it's reached its peak."

Between Facebook and Twitter, Bit.ly didn't find much difference between the half life of specific links. However, "As clickers, we remain interested in links on youtube for a much longer period of time," it reports. Also of note, Bit-ly found that the timeliness of a link can greatly influence its freshness. A link to a hurricane news report might immediately trigger a clicking frenzy, but its half life will naturally be short as audiences move on to more timely reports.

Read the whole story at Bit.ly »