Comments on: Facebook Largest News Reader?

By: weblike

weblike — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 07:57:02 +0000

good news for all social optimizers

By: Mathieu

Mathieu — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 07:47:48 +0000

Wow you’re fixing data to go with what you want it to say. It’s hardly fair to take Facebook as a whole and compare it to only one small portion of Google rather than take all of Google’s domain. Google leaves Facebook in the dust. I thought journalists were supposed to be unbiased.

By: Ecommerce Wall

Ecommerce Wall — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:08:25 +0000

Hello,
I am just discovering this article on a French blog,
I love Google reader,
Thanks

By: Steve Mitgang

Steve Mitgang — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 10:27:52 +0000

Great analysis. How does this convert to actual traffic. In other words, how many people is Facebook sending to the Weather Channel every month? Are there spikes during the week or around events?
Thanks in advance.

By: Silicon Valley Watcher - at the intersection of technology and media

Silicon Valley Watcher - at the intersection of technology and media — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 14:32:31 +0000

Hitwise Uncovers Puzzling Difference Between Sharing News And Consuming It

Heather Hopkins is senior online analyst at Hitwise, which monitors traffic to web sites for Experian. She writes that “Facebook Users Prefer Broadcast Media.”A couple of weeks ago, I posted an entry about Facebook becoming the largest news reader. Fac…

By: Matrak

Matrak — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 09:14:13 +0000

Hi Heather, thanks for looking into this

By: Ola Henriksson

Ola Henriksson — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 09:50:59 +0000

Very interesting figures. From where comes the data? Google Analytics or your own statistics? I have learned that GA counts referrer very different from other statistic systems. If you go from FB to “site” and then back to FB again and after a while visit “site” via typing in the url GA still counts FB as a referrer.

By: Heather Hopkins

Heather Hopkins — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 00:40:48 +0000

Hi Jamie, We are reporting any click – which as you can say can be from bookmarks, typing in a URL, etc. Through custom analysis we might be able to isolate clickthroughs. However, in what we currently have available, we report on the natural flow of traffic among websites – be that clicks on links or otherwise.
Cheers, Heather

By: Jamie

Jamie — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 06:27:34 +0000

Interesting. Do ‘upstream visits’ mean clickthroughs? Or might users have navigated from FB to news sites via bookmarks, typing URLs, or whatever? Is there a way of isolating clickthroughs? We’d need to do that to really know whether FB is driving traffic to news or whether it’s just the large number of FB users that pushes it to #4. Incidentally the number of Twitter users is a tiny fraction of FB’s, so it’s not surprising it doesn’t compare.

By: Personal finance and investing

Personal finance and investing — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 11:23:40 +0000

Facebook Grows as a Source for News

Filed under: Google (GOOG) , Microsoft (MSFT) , Yahoo! (YHOO) , New York Times'A' (NYT) , News

By: Heather Hopkins

Heather Hopkins — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 21:06:14 +0000

Thanks for all the comments.
Yes, Twitter was included. However, I should mention that we are tracking internet visits (not visits from mobile phones). Twitter.com accounted for 0.15% of upstream visits to News and Media sites last week.
I’ll try to get a line graph for the top 10 table shortly…

By: James Kittock

James Kittock — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 16:51:56 +0000

Interesting… can you generate a stacked line graph corresponding to your top 10 table? It would be interesting to see if it reveals which of the other upstream products are declining as FB’s share grows.

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 15:50:21 +0000

Was Twitter mesaured?

By: Silicon Valley Watcher - at the intersection of technology and media

Silicon Valley Watcher - at the intersection of technology and media — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 14:54:53 +0000

Hitwise: Facebook Becoming Major News And Media Distributor

Heather Hopkins, senior analyst at Hitwise, which tracks traffic to large web sites, says Facebook is become a major news reader.Facebook was the #4 source of visits to News and Media sites last week, after Google, Yahoo! and msn. News and Media is the…

By: Paid Content

Paid Content — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 11:17:04 +0000

Facebook’s New Role: News Site

Facebook, the news site? Hitwise runs the numbers and determines that the social network is now the fourth

By: Ian Lamont

Ian Lamont — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 10:38:25 +0000

Interesting that Twitter doesn’t show up in the top 10 list. Surely all of those Twitter.com and Twitter client links must be adding up to some significant traffic.

By: J S Alarcon

J S Alarcon — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 22:32:30 +0000

Yes, I believe Facebook has a high loyal readership according to your figures.

By: Mark Glaser

Mark Glaser — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 15:17:09 +0000

Hi Heather,
Great chart and analysis. I’m curious why Twitter isn’t tracked as a referrer to news sites. My experience is that they’re about #2 or #3 for MediaShift traffic after Google. But perhaps it’s difficult to track Twitter traffic from so many various apps and URL shorteners?

By: News: Everything-e

News: Everything-e — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 13:20:23 +0000

Will Publishers Let Facebook Become the Web’s Biggest News Source?

I have a question for you. Where do you get the majority of your online news? Is it from a feed reader

By: Heather Hopkins

Heather Hopkins — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 09:59:43 +0000

Marshall, Sure thing – I’ve added a table above showing the top 10 sources of traffic to News and Media websites last week. We received the same question from a couple of other readers too. So a very good addition!
Best, Heather