What makes content worthy of sharing with your friends?

This New York Times article is quite interesting.

Will You Be E-Mailing This Column? It’s Awesome
by JOHN TIERNEY
Published: February 8, 2010

It quotes a study done by “researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have intensively studied the New York Times list of most-e-mailed articles, checking it every 15 minutes for more than six months, analyzing the content of thousands of articles and controlling for factors like the placement in the paper or on the Web home page.”

The findings short show that people share stuff that is awe inspiring, emotional, positive or surprising.

I think that many libraries focus on heartening and inspiring strategies. Maybe we need to be more open about this goal in our strategic plans given what this research implies for institutions that focus on sharing.

Stephen