This is eye opening. Thank you for posting this, Eric.

According to Tynt's data, that could be contributing to a massive distortion of actual consumer behavior. Based on its most recent findings, Dark Social currently represents about 71% of all social-sharing, while Light Social represents only 29%.

The skews become even more exaggerated when 33Across began to dig into specific forms of content sharing, especially types of information consumers are prone to keep to themselves or a handful of close friends.

Take a category like financial news and information, for example. According to the Tynt data, 90% of social traffic coming to business and financial publishers of all kinds -- both big and small -- is generated from Dark Social vs. only 10% from Light Social.

“This is a category that thrives on peer-to-peer sharing,” explains Haskins, adding, “and not a persona curation mindset.”

By contrast,Tynt's data shows that media and entertainment news and information publishers -- sites that cover high profile content like TV, movies, etc. -- currently generate about two-thirds (67%) of their social traffic from Light Social networks.