The idea that "social networks" and "social media" sites created a social web is pervasive. Everyone behaves as if the traffic your stories receive from the social networks (Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, StumbleUpon) is the same as all of your social traffic. I began to wonder if I was wrong. Or at least that what I had experienced was a niche phenomenon and most people's web time was not filled with Gchatted and emailed links. I began to think that perhaps Facebook and Twitter has dramatically expanded the volume of -- at the very least -- linksharing that takes place.
But it's not true; a vast majority of traffic to The Atlantic's site is from links without referrer headers, that is, links somehow shared outside of the web, whether email, IM, or text. Alexis Madrigal digs into this alternate history of the social web and the data on it and what it means for our relationship with content and social networks.