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Hitwise Intelligence - Heather Hopkins - North America
Analyst Weblog
Facebook Users Prefer Broadcast Media
March 01, 2010
A couple of weeks ago, I posted an entry about Facebook becoming the largest news reader. Facebook does send more traffic to News and Media sites than Google News but looking more closely at the data, I noticed that the two sites send traffic to a very different list of News and Media websites. The following table starts to tell the story, showing the top 10 News and Media websites visited after Facebook and Google News last week.
These two lists are very different. In particular, notice the preponderance of print media brands among the top downstream sites from Google News.
A larger proportion of Facebook's News and Media traffic is directed toward Broadcast Media websites compared with Google News. The following chart illustrates this point nicely. The chart shows upstream visits to Broadcast Media websites from Facebook and Google News over the past year.
Compare that to Print Media websites where Google News, despite being a much smaller site overall, still sends almost as much traffic to Print Media websites as does Facebook.
Digging even deeper, let's look at a few individual websites. The Wall Street Journal last week received 10.37% of its US visits from Google News compared to only 1.41% from Facebook. The New York Times similarly received more traffic from Google News than from Facebook (5.21% compared to 2.96% of upstream visits). Fox News and CNN by contrast received more traffic from Facebook than Google News. Fox News received 5.50% from Facebook and 1.18% from Google News while CNN received 5.92% from Facebook and 1.77% from Google News.
But why the difference? Do Facebook users prefer Broadcast Media? I ran a correlation analysis to try to figure out if the amount of traffic Facebook sends a site is related to the number of fans a brand has on its Facebook page. I found no such correlation. (For the analysis, I used downstream visits from Facebook to 23 top News and Media websites excluding news aggregators and compared this to the number of fans on the associated Facebook page.)
A colleague pointed me to an article in the New York Times suggesting that social networks are creating a water cooler effect and actually boosting viewership of broadcast media. Is Facebook the new water cooler and if so, how can print media capitalize on this trend?
Continue reading.
Posted by Heather Hopkins at 09:04 AM
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In Categories News and Media
Facebook Largest News Reader?
February 03, 2010
Marshall Kirkpatrick at Read Write Web had an interesting piece suggesting that Facebook could become the world's leading news reader. A recent Facebook company blog entry encouraged members to set up a news feed on Facebook. Kirkpatrick contends that with a few tweeks, Facebook could become a major distribution force for news content.
The last time I wrote about feed readers, Google Reader was just about to overtake Bloglines. That was in May 2008 - things have changed. Google Reader's growth continued (with some setbacks) until November 2009. Since then, visits have been dropping off. As Kirkpatrick mentions in his article, RSS readers never really reached "change-the-world feed-reading mass adoption."
Last week, Google Reader accounted for .01% of upstream visits to News and Media websites, about the same level as a year ago. Google News accounted for 1.39% of visits and Facebook 3.52%. The following chart illustrates the increase over the past year in visits from Facebook to News and Media websites, relative to Google News.
Facebook was the #4 source of visits to News and Media sites last week, after Google, Yahoo! and msn (see table below). News and Media is the #11 downstream industry after Facebook, receiving 3.69% of the social networking site's traffic. To offer a comparison, 6% of downstream traffic from Facebook went to Shopping and Classifieds last week and 6% to Business and Finance and 15% went to Entertainment websites (YouTube in particular). (Note, my colleague Heather Dougherty posted an entry on Social Networks and Retail traffic earlier this week).
Facebook could be a major disruptor to the News and Media category. And with the Wall Street Journal already publishing content to Facebook, perhaps the social network can avoid the run-ins that Google has suffered recently with Rupert Murdoch. We will continue to watch this space.
Posted by Heather Hopkins at 06:06 PM
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In Categories News and Media | Social Networks
Nexus One Appealing to Wealthy. Purchase Intent Seems High.
January 21, 2010
Google's Nexus One phone is a direct competitor to Apple's iPhone and the battle lines are being drawn. As illustrated below, the launch of the Nexus One attracted a great deal of excitement online, with searches for "nexus one" accounting for 1 in every 14,000 US Internet searches the week to January 9, 2010. As illustrated in the chart below, search volume settled down, and the share of searches for "nexus one" and "iphone" were even last week (week to January 16, 2010).
Purchase intent seems high. The #3 downstream website from Google Nexus One was Google Checkout, receiving 6% of downstream visits last week. The #4 downstream site was T-Mobile USA, the Nexus One carrier, receiving 3% of visits.
Wealthy Internet users seem most interested in the Nexus One. Hitwise Experian Mosaic Data reveals that 46% of visits to the Google Nexus One website were from the two wealthiest Lifestyle groups, Affluent America and Upscale Suburbia in the four weeks to January 16, 2010.
Finally, search marketers may take heart in knowing that Google is engaging in paid search marketing along with the rest of us. YouTube was among the top downstream websites (#4) from searches for "nexus one" last week with 31% of clicks going to paid listings.
Posted by Heather Hopkins at 06:14 PM
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In Categories Shopping & Classifieds
Canadians Searching for Winter Escapes
January 19, 2010
With no end in sight to winter and the charm of the ever-mounting snow banks wearing off, Canadians are turning to the web to book winter escapes. Visits to Travel websites have seen a sharp increase over the past two weeks. Canadian Internet visits were up 34% to Travel websites in the two weeks to 1/9/2009 (as illustrated in the chart below). Looking at the increase in visits to the Travel sub-categories we can better understand the drivers of that growth: visits to Travel Agencies were up 51%, Cruises websites 47%, and Destinations and Accommodations 45%.
Expedia.ca, which last week accounted for 12% of visits to Travel Agencies websites, experienced a 66% increase in visits over the past two weeks. Similarly, other leading Travel websites are seeing similar increases, including Air Canada up 54% in the past two weeks, West Jet up 69% and Trip Advisor up 67%.
Searches for last minute deals are proving popular, including "last minute vacations", "last minute travel" and "last minute flights". Popular destinations include Las Vegas, Disney World, Hawaii, Mexico and Jamaica. It's no coincidence that these are all warm and sunny destinations! At the same, we've seen an increase in searches that include the word "ski".
Posted by Heather Hopkins at 06:39 PM
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In Categories Canadian Insights | Travel
