Short Note: What is Dark Social?

The term ‘Dark Social’ was given by Alexis C Madrigal in 2012. It refers to the social sharing of content in such a way that it cannot be measured through the Web analytics programmes. These are the personalized sharing that happens over sites other than the social media like emails, text messages, whatsapp, twitter, snapchat etc. Studies show that dark social occupy most of the social shares, about 80 per cent of the total content shares. The limit has now touched 2.5 million messages per day.

Benefits and Problems of Dark Social

It is very difficult to track dark social content and thus it seems to be great for personalized texts. However, it may create problems of authenticity, issues with security as well as privacy. There are several messages that rotate without any authenticity of their content, thus proliferating the fake news and information also. The authorization of such content is not possible owing to impossibility of tracking. At the same time, dark social has a utility too. People involved in businesses can spread the word regarding their establishments through this method and tracking of marketers or viewers is possible through use of shortened URLs.