Pew Report Finds Facebook Influences What News Gets Read Online

SAN FRANCISCO -- Facebook is influencing what news gets read online as people use the Internet's most popular hangout to share and recommend content.

That's one of the key findings from a study on the flow of traffic to the Web's 25 largest news destinations. The study was released Monday by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Facebook was responsible for 3 percent of traffic to the 21 news sites that allowed data to be tracked, according to the study's co-author, Amy Mitchell. Five of the sites studied got 6 percent to 8 percent of their readers from Facebook.

The referrals typically came from links posted by friends on Facebook's social-networking site or from the ubiquitous "like" buttons, which Facebook encourages other websites to place alongside their content.

The Facebook effect is small compared with Google's clout. Google Inc.'s dominant search engine supplies about 30 percent of traffic to the top news sites, according to Pew.

But Facebook and other sharing tools, such as Addthis.com, are empowering people to rely on their online social circles to point out interesting content. By contrast, Google uses an automated formula to help people find news.

Facebook is at the forefront of this shift because it has more than 500 million worldwide users. That's far more than any other Internet service built for socializing and sharing.

"If searching for the news was the most important development of the last decade, sharing the news may be among the most important of the next," the Pew report said.

Meanwhile, major news sites are getting less than 1 percent of their traffic from Twitter, even though it had about 175 million accounts last year.

Among those studied by Pew, only the Los Angeles Times' website got more traffic from Twitter than Facebook. Twitter accounted for 3.5 percent of the online traffic to the Los Angeles Times, compared with slightly more than 2 percent from Facebook.

The Drudge Report, a site started during the 1990s, is a far more significant traffic source for news sites than Twitter, according to the Pew study.

The Pew report is based on an analysis of Internet traffic data compiled by the research firm Nielsen Co. during the first nine months of last year.

Comments

[flyn2hi]

11:00 AM on 05/09/2011

Could also be called the HuffPo Effect....

[jaredbrain]

10:45 AM on 05/09/2011

I think it's funny that so many of us object to a national identification card but voluntarily put our entire lives on the internet. We all want the privacy to make our own lives virtual, because nothing bad ever happens on the internet.

[Caroleeena]

11:48 AM on 05/09/2011

The difference is you choose what you put on the net. You don't choose what you put on a national identification card.

[freethinking moderate]

01:42 AM on 05/10/2011

Often, what is on the Net is far more than what would ever be on a card.

[rickthaluddite]

09:41 AM on 05/09/2011

I read plenty of news stories that my facebook friends share. I can't find every story that might be interesting, so it's nice to have friends who share what they find.

[SteveSinCal]

09:19 AM on 05/09/2011

[If searching for the news was the most important development of the last decade, sharing the news may be among the most important of the next," the Pew report said.]

I remember when the invention of the turbine engine, jet propulsion and putting a man on the moon were the most important developments of the decade. Now we have progressed to.....searching for news. How embarrassing.

The reason why Facebook links are less than a few percentage points is because people friend their extended family, but it doesn't mean they share politics with them. Twitter throws hundreds of links at people per minute, there's no way to have a high click thru on that mess.

[mondit]

08:29 AM on 05/09/2011

Facebook is like a one night stand. Wild and crazy night followed by STD. In this case the STD is using your profile for profit and a ready made database for government spying. Nothing you put on there is ever deleted and when you opt out, they say, "Sorry to see you leave, everything will be here if you want to come back." I opted out mainly for those 2 reasons but also it seemed like a high school playground with the usual high school games. Same could be said for here. But you can protect yourself by getting a disposable email address and bounce your IP. Stay alert, my friends, and fight back.

[StuckInLimbo]

08:15 AM on 05/09/2011

That would explain the 'Baby Panda Falls Off a Rocking Horse' story just below this one.

[Glory 66]

06:46 AM on 05/09/2011

I have been thinking about this recently because i myself share lots of contents on Facebook and Twitter,of course which i believe to be interesting and important.BBC news is one of sites i visit often,huffingtonpost.com as well;i have them in my news feed and watch what happens.What becomes great advantage of tracking news on Facebook is way to leave a comment,no need to open web site and go there,and doing so you are involved in discussion with other readers.It is also the main place to hear fresh news ,from first hand,as we got used to open Facebook or Twitter's pages in the morning.

[P Markham72]

06:46 AM on 05/09/2011

This isn't exactly news. Of course with so many people on Facebook many will use it as a sole source of news. The unfortunate part is many people are too ignorant to decipher or investigate further the difference between the fiction and the truth. Facebook is a great place for taking advantage of those who use it as a sole source of News.

[BuckoForce]

05:01 AM on 05/09/2011

What about the Hu.ffpo/a.ol effect

[Luke McIntosh]

04:50 AM on 05/09/2011

This is like saying, "Pew Report finds sun rises in the west" Of course Facebook will influence you...it's now a tool of communication with your "circle." It's common sense.

[ThePassedPawn]

07:01 AM on 05/09/2011

I never knew the sun rises in west!

[pseudonymXXVI]

07:14 AM on 05/09/2011

Doesn't the sun rise in the east?

[StephenJK]

09:02 AM on 05/09/2011

It's rising somewhere in the west for those in the east? kakakaka

[Said One]

04:03 AM on 05/09/2011

Well for me I'm currently using Flickr and Yahoo and I check Yahoo's trending search often

[PlutocratsSuck]

02:56 AM on 05/09/2011

If you use Farcebook, you have only yourself to blame.

[dead WASP]

03:19 AM on 05/09/2011

Is there a permanent way to delete from it?

[mondit]

08:31 AM on 05/09/2011

No. You leave and you can return where you left it. All that stuff you "deleted"? Download your information and see. Wait for Diaspora.

[Gup]

05:37 AM on 05/09/2011

You have to take the bad with the good. There are old friends back in my life now, who I would have not been able to find if not for Facebook. Unfortunately, we have to put up with the data-mining stuff too...oh well.

[mcnote5150]

01:51 AM on 05/09/2011

Facebook the data mining specialist. They make it easier for advertising agencies to target market to you so their clients can save money by knowing your preferences and profile.