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BREAKING NEWS & VIEWS

Is Facebook Turning Into the New Google News?
Thursday, February 4, 2010

Every Web site manager already knows how powerful a traffic driver Facebook can be, but according to the latest data from Hitwise, the social network is supplanting even Google News and Google’s RSS feed reader as a dominant funnel to news and information sites.

Hitwise analyst Heather Hopkins reports that in the last week of January, Google Reader accounted for only .01% of visits to news and media Web sites and Google News pushed only 1.39% of the category’s traffic. Meanwhile, in just the last six months, the share of traffic going to media sites from Facebook has doubled to 3.52%. Overall, including search result traffic, Facebook has become the fourth-largest source of traffic for media, behind Google, Yahoo and MSN.

With media brands like the Wall Street Journal essentially turning their Facebook page into news feeds, the social network is becoming the portal of the contemporary Web. Many users keep their Facebook page in an open window throughout the day and let it serve as their main aggregator of content and conversations. In late January, the Facebook blog itself instructed users on how to set up a feed on their own profile page that filtered their favorite news sources and let their friends act as a filter for the news stories that are most relevant.

As the Hitwise chart below shows, Facebook referrals to news and media mushroomed in recent months as people seem to be getting into the habit of relying on their profile pages and fan subscriptions for news. Publishers not only need to create Facebook feeds that accommodate this trend but also need to encourage users to include and share their news in these personal lists and news filters.

The long-term implications of this shift are even more significant for Google. As some analysts have been predicting for a number of years, social networks could challenge the search box as an important mode of content discovery in some categories. In the media segment, this shift may already have begun. Your friends are the filter.


If you have breaking news to share please contact Steve Smith at ssmith@accessintel.com

COMMENTS
1.
I love the irony that FB is not among the accelerator choices at the top of this article!!!
Posted by Jan MacLatchie on Thursday, February 4, 2010 @ 03:11 PM
2.
Even Google Buzz is connecting in Facebook, what else Google will connects to facebook to have the traffic, that facebook has?
Posted by affordable website d on Monday, February 22, 2010 @ 01:04 AM
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