People get their news from Facebook, Google, not Twitter
Hitwise, a Web-traffic monitoring company, has revealed new data showing that Twitter doesn’t even come close to Google News and Facebook when it comes to where people actually get their news.
And I’m thinking that, when it comes to business news, Twitter may even be further behind. But that doesn’t mean Twitter is not useful to business journalists.
Hitwise reported yesterday that Twitter ranks No. 39 on a list of places people go for breaking news. Facebook is No. 3.
And the day before, Hitwise announced that Facebook outpaced the popularity of U.S. Google News. Last week, Facebook received more visits to its home page than the U.S. Google News home page.
Twitter has had explosive growth though. The micro-blogging site nearly triped share of U.S. Internet visits year-over-year last week. Yet, news and media sites have not seen anything near similar growth rates in traffic back to their sites from Twitter.
And even if ardent Twitter users turn to the people and institutions they follow for breaking news and eyewitness reports about events, the average person is probably not turning to Twitter for business news.
But, Twitter can still be a useful tool for business reporters. Twitter may drive less traffic back to your work than hoped for, but it does still provide a great look at what people on your beat and working on. Twitter can be a great tickler file and monitoring your account can be a useful extension of your beat. If you’re on Twitter, follow people who are breaking business news. Follow people on your beat.
TWITTER BUSINESS LISTS WORTH FOLLOWING:
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Does this study take into account API access to Twitter? Most people I know never go to Twitter.com and only interact with twitter via 3rd party apps.
How can you get your news from Facebook? You can only read what your friends post, and they can’t possibly have all the info you find on Google News!
I’m a bit unclear about what “going to Facebook” for news means versus “going to Twitter”. If what the article means is how many people read a twitter user’s stream like @nytimes then i agree. If they mean how many people use bit.ly links from their social circle’s streams to find out about news then i vastly disagree. Just look at SXSW. I didn’t use one traditional media source (Google, NYTimes, etc..) to find out what was going on at SXSW. It was all my friends posting bit.ly links to relevant panels, live videos, follow ups, etc.. Facebook sees some of the same phenomenon but not anywhere as dense when it comes to business (in my circle).
I think these distinction are important. I’m not shilling for Twitter or Dissing FB – just trying to disambiguify what this article is really saying. No doubt i use FB more than Twitter but my social circles are vastly different on each.
Biggman: I believe it doesn’t really matter whether someone looks at their Twitter feed via mobile, desktop, TweetDeck Hootsuite, etc. It is the links via Twitter back to media sites that they are counting.
If I read my Twitter feed (what my friends post Niel Robertson) on my phone, and hit a link back to my local paper, that counts just like when I hit those same links from Twitter on my desktop.
I do agree with what you say, Robin (re:Twitter). But, for me, it is only a question of time. Content shared by people I (conscientiously) follow on Twitter has a real value for me. These recommendations help me navigate the immense content wave…
The point is now : how can I browse “rapidly” all this content to pickup what is really interesting me.
And solutions are coming now, to solve this. Look @ http://www.paper.li, using semantic analysis, and quite complex algorithm to present your timeline as a newspaper and to enable you a quick scan of content shared.
Give it a try : http://paper.li
Ed