Bild.de is one step ahead in social networks. This is the result of the study “Development of the Social Network Usage in Germany since 2012” by the TU Darmstadt. With 24.5 million recommendations, the Springer site is ahead of Focus with 22.1 and Spiegel Online with 20.1 million.
The study looked at more than 487,000 articles from the 15 most successful news portals. 95 percent of articles are recommended via Facebook. On Twitter, however, it is only 3.5 percent. From the researchers' perspective, Facebook is the mainstream medium, while Twitter is only used by the information elite.
Overall, the tone on social networks has become more serious: Last year, colorful topics were particularly successful; in 2015, there were articles on terrorist attacks, politics, scandals and the refugee debate.