Social networking site Facebook is being mooted as the possible number one source for
online news in the near future.
In an era of feed readers, Twitter, Google News, Yahoo News and news publication websites themselves, statistics show that web users are increasingly heading to Facebook for their news fix. Although news remains one of the most popular uses for microblogging site Twitter too, Facebook has a considerably larger user base.
According to Heather Hopkins from website-traffic tracker Experian Hitwise, 3.52 per cent of upstream visits to news and media websites last week came from Facebook, compared to 1.39 per cent from number one aggregator Google News.
"Facebook was the #4 source of visits to news and media sites last week, after Google, Yahoo! and msn," she continues. "News and media is the #11 downstream industry after Facebook, receiving 3.69 per cent of the social networking site's traffic."
For comparison purposes, Hopkins points out that six per cent of downstream traffic from Facebook went to shopping and classifieds sites last week, the same proportion went to business and finance portals and 15 per cent went to entertainment websites - particularly video-sharing site YouTube.
"Facebook could be a major disruptor to the news and media category," she concludes, noting that the social network can possibly avoid the same problems Google has had with News International boss Rupert Murdoch since it already has the Wall Street Journal and the
Associated Press publishing their content.
On the
Facebook company blog last month, users were even encouraged to set up news lists which aggregate stories from different sources that publish their content on their Facebook pages. The function, which requires only that users become fans of their chosen publications' pages, has already been compared to RSS feeds.
Many Newsvend clients are doing this already without having to lift a finger themselves. We write their unique, tailored news for them and automatically stream the headlines into their Facebook and Twitter accounts, with links back to the original news pages on their websites.
