The Life Expectancy of That Link You Just Shared

Say you found a great article on the Internet. Say it's this slideshow of a kitten befriending a baby otter. You want to share it online--you know your friends and followers in the various social network you're a part of will love it. But which network should you share it on?

This week, URL shortening site Bit.ly crunched the numbers from their database, offering insight into how long a link stays relevant when shared through various media. For their analysis, they coined a metric called "half life," borrowing a term from physics. It's the amount of time a link will receive half of the clicks it will ever receive after its peak. For example, the half life for that baby animal article, which was originally shared by Stylist magazine on Facebook, was 70 minutes, meaning that the link received about half the click it will ever get within the first hour of its posting.

Read the full story at The Atlantic Wire.