This term has come up in conversations and presentations in the past few days (AKQA & shareablee) so I decided to do a little research because I was curious. Dark social is social sharing content that occurs outside of what can be measured by an analytics program. It does not appear publicly. Dark social often shows up in analytics as “direct” or “bookmarked” traffic but does not give specifics. For example, many branded Facebook posts are targeted to a specific audience. However, not everyone sees them. Another example is Instagram promoted posts. It’s hard to measure the data behind the posts because it’s difficult to see everything a brand is putting out into the world. Another aspect of “dark social” is sharing content privately by cutting and pasting making it hard to track website traffic and engagement.

-Meg Winters 05.10.17