Tap of the pops as city web habits mapped out

A team led by Sheffield University academic Tom Stafford teamed up with Mike Dewar, who works with the link shortening service bit.ly, for the innovative study.

Using data from bit.ly, the group were able to analyse all the shared links which people in Sheffield had clicked on in a week.

Social networking site Facebook – perhaps unsurprisingly – came out on top, followed by the BBC and YouTube.

The breakdown of top 10 websites also provided evidence of Sheffield’s reputation as a football-mad city, as the GivemeFootball site was in fourth place.

The Owls also won the internet derby, as the Sheffield Wednesday website made it into the top 10 while the Blades’ site did not.

Dr Stafford, 33, said: “This was an exciting collaboration between Sheffield University and a Sheffield graduate who is now working with bit.ly in New York.

“Bit.ly is a link shortening service which makes long internet links shorter so you can conveniently share them with people. People share links through sites such as Facebook or Twitter using these bit.ly shorteners, so they tell us a lot about what’s been shared, at what time and in what place.

“Although the popularity of sites such as Facebook and the BBC isn’t really shocking, this is the kind of information we never had before. It’s a map of what we like to share with each other.

“For example, when people first drew a map of Sheffield, they weren’t surprised to see the city centre in the middle and the Peak District on the edge, but it was still exciting to see how everything fitted together for the first time.”