????社交共享是由公司集中控制的。瀏覽量是一個(gè)用以衡量開(kāi)放網(wǎng)絡(luò)，可以通過(guò)各種手段進(jìn)行跟蹤的量化標(biāo)準(zhǔn)。而社交共享則是由社交網(wǎng)絡(luò)自身集中衡量，并向外發(fā)布的。社交網(wǎng)絡(luò)可能存在寬松地計(jì)算共享數(shù)據(jù)以顯得自身更受歡迎的動(dòng)機(jī)，盡管出版商可以核實(shí)這些共享數(shù)據(jù)是否真正帶來(lái)了頁(yè)面流量。這當(dāng)然是一個(gè)問(wèn)題，它從屬于一個(gè)更大的憂(yōu)慮：許多人擔(dān)心互聯(lián)網(wǎng)本身是不是正在變得更加集中化。

????社交共享是一個(gè)大混雜。一個(gè)與上述批評(píng)意見(jiàn)相關(guān)的問(wèn)題是，什么數(shù)據(jù)可以納入社交共享指標(biāo)，可能會(huì)因?yàn)樯缃痪W(wǎng)絡(luò)自身的不同想法而瞬息變化。計(jì)算社交共享時(shí)往往出現(xiàn)一些我們可能并不認(rèn)同的主觀判斷，比如把一條鏈接微博的轉(zhuǎn)發(fā)也算作一次社交共享。當(dāng)然，確定瀏覽量或者谷歌分析（Google Analytics）和Omniture提供的獨(dú)立訪(fǎng)問(wèn)量服務(wù)時(shí)，同樣也存在大量的主觀判斷。所以說(shuō)，這種意見(jiàn)并不是什么新鮮事。但由于每家社交網(wǎng)絡(luò)皆是其社交共享數(shù)據(jù)的獨(dú)家提供商，這種憂(yōu)慮的確出現(xiàn)了增大的趨勢(shì)。

????自動(dòng)分享增加了社交共享數(shù)值。有些Twitter賬戶(hù)的創(chuàng)建目的就是為了發(fā)布一些給定的RSS訂閱源，所以有些文章不管質(zhì)量如何，總會(huì)在Twitter上獲得不少分享次數(shù)。這種情況肯定將扭曲社交共享數(shù)值，但由于Twitter留言是公開(kāi)的（不計(jì)算來(lái)自私人Twitter賬戶(hù)的留言），這種情況一旦出現(xiàn)，是可以被檢測(cè)到的。

????我們已經(jīng)把所有的反對(duì)意見(jiàn)都擺放在臺(tái)面上了，接下來(lái)讓我們總結(jié)一下社交共享的優(yōu)點(diǎn)：

????社交共享是一種有意圖的用戶(hù)行為。一個(gè)誤導(dǎo)性標(biāo)題、一張預(yù)覽照片或一個(gè)搜索結(jié)果常常會(huì)很容易地慫恿我們?yōu)g覽一篇我們其實(shí)不想閱讀的文章。如此以來(lái)，我們就為出版商的瀏覽量和收入做出了貢獻(xiàn)。但正如Buzzfeed公司負(fù)責(zé)產(chǎn)品事務(wù)的副總裁克里斯?約翰內(nèi)森所言：“你無(wú)法哄騙某個(gè)人向他或她的朋友分享一篇文章?！痹谏缃幻襟w分享一篇文章，是一種意圖非常明顯的用戶(hù)行為，需要比一次瀏覽量更多的點(diǎn)擊次數(shù)。

????社交共享關(guān)乎用戶(hù)的社交網(wǎng)絡(luò)形象。與瀏覽量和評(píng)論不同，人們非常用心地分享一篇文章，意味著他們?cè)敢庠赥witter上告訴整個(gè)世界或者至少告訴Facebook上的朋友，他們喜歡這篇文章。

????社交共享不依賴(lài)抽樣。在如今的網(wǎng)絡(luò)上，來(lái)自尼爾森公司（Nielsen）和康姆斯科公司（comScore）的抽樣數(shù)據(jù)是少數(shù)幾個(gè)相對(duì)客觀的關(guān)注度衡量指標(biāo)之一。做得好時(shí)，采樣可以成為一個(gè)強(qiáng)大的指標(biāo)。但正如許多宣稱(chēng)選舉不公道的人士所知道的那樣，這種做法并不完美。少數(shù)派和新平臺(tái)經(jīng)常未被充分代表。由于缺乏數(shù)據(jù)，采樣數(shù)據(jù)只能顯示某個(gè)出版物層級(jí)，而不是一篇給定文章的受關(guān)注度。與之相比，社交共享數(shù)據(jù)能夠充分顯示網(wǎng)絡(luò)上每篇文章的分享次數(shù)。

????社交共享次數(shù)是公開(kāi)的，因此不易造假。不同于其他任何網(wǎng)絡(luò)衡量標(biāo)準(zhǔn)，任何人都可以看到社交共享次數(shù)。眾所周知的是，許多出版商和企業(yè)家都在操縱他們向公眾發(fā)布的指標(biāo)。他們往往能夠逃脫懲罰，因?yàn)橹挥兴麄儞碛蟹治鱿到y(tǒng)的訪(fǎng)問(wèn)權(quán)限。而社交共享則不在出版商的掌控范圍，它是一個(gè)統(tǒng)一的尺度。

????Social shares are centrally controlled by corporations. While pageviews are a measure of the open web that can be tracked through a variety of means, social shares are centrally measured and reported by the social networks themselves. There may be an incentive for the networks to count these numbers liberally to appear more popular, though publishers can check if it's actually resulting in traffic. This is certainly a concern, and a subset of a larger worry many have about the web being more centralized in general.

????The definition of a social share is influx. Related to the prior criticism, what goes into the social share metric can change at the whim of a social network. There are judgment calls that go into calculating what a social share is, such as counting retweets of a tweet with a link as a share itself, we might not agree with. Of course, there are plenty of judgement calls that go into defining a pageview or unique visitor by services like Google Analytics (GOOG) or Omniture (ADBE), so this is nothing new. But the concern is heightened since each social network is the exclusive provider of its own share counts.

????Autosharing increases social share counts. There are some Twitter accounts set up to tweet anything in a given RSS feed, so some articles will get a handful of tweets no matter what. When this happens it definitely skews the numbers, but since tweets are public (tweets from private Twitter accounts are not counted) it can be detected when this occurs.

????Now that we've got the objections on the table, let's look at the virtues of social shares:

????Social shares are an intentional action by users. It's easy to get pulled into viewing an article you don't really want to read by a misleading headline, preview photo or search result, which results in a pageview and often revenue for the publisher. But as Buzzfeed's VP Product Chris Johanesen wrote "you can't trick someone into sharing a story with their friends." Sharing an article on social media is a very intentional act by a user, requiring several more clicks than a pageview.

????Social shares require users to put their identities on the line. Unlike pageviews and comments, when people care to share an article they're willing to tell the world on Twitter or at least their friends on Facebook (FB) that they care about the article.

????Social share counts don't rely on sampling. One of the few objective measures of attention on the web today is sampled data from the likes of Nielsen (NLSN) and comScore (SCOR). When done well, sampling can be a powerful indicator, but as many people who've miscalled elections know it's not perfect. Often minorities and new platforms are underrepresented. Sampled data can only be reported at a publication level rather than for a given article due to lack of data. Social share numbers report a full count for every article on the web.

????Social share counts are public and therefore not easy to fib about. Unlike just about every other web metric, anyone can look up social share counts. Many publishers and entrepreneurs are known to manipulate the metrics they release to the public. They've been able to get away it with since only they have access to the analytics system. Social shares are out of the control of the publishers and a uniform metric.