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Twitter: It’s picture-perfect, apparently

Remember way back in Twitter’s early days when people complained that the only posts on Twitter were people sharing what they had for lunch? Now, not only are we telling people what we had for lunch, we’re showing them as well.

If you haven’t seen the new infographic released by Diffbot (and published on Mashable today), it’s definitely worth a look. Because the information may surprise you.

Diffbot reviewed 750,000 links on Twitter to see how we’re using social media. What are we sharing? What catches our attention?

It turns out, a majority of our Twitter links aren’t to articles. They aren’t even to videos. Or homepages.

Nope, according to the study, we most link to images. Thirty-six percent of the time, in fact.

So, what does that potentially mean? Here are a few of my thoughts.

1. The photo trend isn’t limited to just Instagram and Pinterest. It seems that images are becoming more and more prominent in every aspect of our online lives. Which begs the question: Which came first, our affinity for photos or the apps and sites that make them easier to share?

2. Video isn’t catching on in the sharing world as much as everyone would like you to believe. It’s been the big bad monster at a lot of companies: We need more video. People want more video. People share more video. While video can do wonders for engagement with a site (people will stay longer on your page), it turns out that it may not be entirely true that users are sharing your video with their friends. Will this change? Probably. But if you’re putting all of your energy into video and ignoring photos and images, you’re missing out on a big opportunity right now.

3. Not everyone is using Instagram. As much as we tend to complain that the “hipster photo” is taking over our lives, it seems that at least according to these links, we’re posting more photos on plain old Twitter than we are using Instagram. The weak showing of Facebook in this category also adds some legitimacy as to why Zuckerberg and Co. bought Instagram earlier this year.

4. If you are a content creator, don’t forget about the photo. It’s something that I’ve started recommending to people I come in contact with, and this affirms that assertion in my mind. Every post should have a photo that is able to be shared. That means you didn’t “borrow” the photo from somewhere else. You have permission to use the image and are OK with people using the image to link to your content. The growth of Pinterest almost demands this, especially if you’re a retail or business-to-consumer organization.

There are lots of other interesting nuggets in the infographic as well … and a few surprises. What are your thoughts about the information? Did anything surprise you?

(See the infographic via Mashable here.)

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