ArtSites Updates

Which Images Get Shared the Most?
(posted on 7 Jun 2013)
This week, I came across a fascinating study that looked at which images get shared more on Pinterest.

In case you're not familiar with Pinterest, Pinterest is one of the fastest growing social networks AND it's based on VISUALS!

If you're not on Pinterest, I'd strongly recommend signing up!

Pinterest examined the pixels of more than 500,000 images and analyzed faces, texture, hue, saturation, lightness, brightness and aspect ratio.

Based on their examination, they came up with the following conclusions:
  • Vertical “portrait” style images with 2.3 to 4.5 aspect ratios are more likely to be shared over long or wide images
  • Images with multiple dominant colors are 3.25 times more likely to be shared than those with one dominant color
  • Very light and very dark images are NOT shared as often
  • The Sharing Rate for images of medium lightness is:
    • 20X higher than for predominantly black images
    • 8X higher than predominantly white images
  • Red images get shared more compared with blue images
  • Red, orange and brown images receive roughly 2X as many shares
  • Images with 50% saturation get 4X more shares than images with 100% saturation, and10X more shares than images that are totally desaturated
  • Images with less than 30% background or white space are shared the most
  • Images with a smooth texture are shared up to 17X more than images with a rough texture
If you'd like to read more, here's an article that provides a few more details and context!

So, when you're thinking of your own artwork images, do keep some of these statistics in mind in terms of which images you use online!

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