[Me on Google+]
Hitwise published exciting benchmark figures about upstream traffic to news and media from Google News in comparison with Facebook recently which grasped my attention.
If you look at the figures provided you get some really interesting news: while Google News is accountable for 1.39% of upstream traffic to news, Facebook already exceeded the numbers as 3.52% of upstream traffic to media/news came from FB. Current SEO strategies of media and newspapers focus on uploading data into Google News to achieve high rankings.
When Facebook (FB) launched Facebook connect they already took a major step towards becoming the integral part of social media strategies of portal sites. But these figures tell a whole new story. What we might observe here is a trend in the opposite direction.
First: Integrating portal content ("news") into Facebook itself might turn it into a news portal. In that sense news publishers might become more and more forced to cast their news on FB. This will change the media landscape substantially. News publishing of trusted sources becomes a core part of a network. It is no longer an additional URL we need to type into the address line of our browsers.
Second: Facebook is the leading social network right now, linking one member to another. News integrated as described above would change the game of how news will be communicated tomorrow: no longer excluded from readers as separate (news sites) entities in the outside world, news would become integral part of the community itself. Like oxygen surrounding members of a group.
Like to digg deeper into the figures?
Hitwise: "Facebook largest news reader?"
ReadWriteWe: "Facebook Could Become World's Leading News Reader (Sorry Google)"
Your comment is correct. Hitwise compares primarily Google News with Facebook. Therefore I added "News" in my original posting but also some additional conclusions.
Posted by: Steffen Konrath | February 06, 2010 at 08:47 PM
Your premise is wrong. The data you cite is for Google news. Google proper drives 5x the traffic that Facebook does,17+%.
Posted by: mike | February 06, 2010 at 04:25 PM