We’ve always advocated that ranking content by the number of times it has been shared rather than the number of times it has been viewed produces a more authentic barometer of what’s genuinely popular and the sheer volume of those shares is one of the biggest changes over the last half-decade. Here is a chart of the number of shares tracked by the Viral Video Chart since it was first launched back in September 13, 2006. It shows that the number of shares across Facebook, Twitter and the blogosphere has multiplied in size by 100x in the last five years, growing from 27,183 in September 2008 to 3,502,849,134 in September 2011.