New data from Experian Hitwise suggests that Facebook users are treating it increasingly like a portal — they’re using it as a source of news. Just under a year ago, less than 0.5% of visits to news and media sites came from Facebook, according to Experian Hitwise. Last week, 3.5% of visits to sites in the news and media category came from Facebook.
The only sites sending more traffic to news and media sites were Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Even Google News was less of an important source of traffic to news and media sites — it accounted for only 1.39% of category upstream visits.
Data from Nielsen released last week showed that in December 2009, Facebook had close to 120 million US users and that average time spent on the site increased by 200% over December 2008. All of the metrics services rank Facebook in the top 5 of all internet sites. The only sites that get more traffic are search engines (Google) and portals (Yahoo and MSN). Clearly the status update has the power to drive large amounts of traffic.
The Wall Street Journal has already picked up on the importance of Facebook by setting up its own Facebook page. Blogs like VentureBeat figured out long ago that Facebook could boost traffic. How long will it take other news outlets to follow suit?
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