We already know that different kinds of posts drive different levels of activity. But do the dynamics of link traffic also depend on where the link is posted? It would seem that it does according to a new study by link-shortening service bit.ly that shows that links have an impact for far longer when posted on YouTube over those shared on Twitter or even Facebook. The study of the half life of 1,000 popular bit.ly links revealed the following: 

• The mean half life of a link on twitter is 2.8 hours
• A link on Facebook nets results for 3.2 hours
• Direct’ sources like email or IM clients yield it’s 3.4 hours.
• You can expect an average of an extra 24 minutes of attention if you post on Facebook over a post on twitter.

The surprise in the bitly graph below is that links that originate from YouTube have a half life of 7.4 hours.