Title: What Facebook and Twitter Mean for News | Pew Research Center
Headings: What Facebook and Twitter Mean for News
What Facebook and Twitter Mean for News
Facebook and Twitter Are Still Relatively Small Drivers for News
Between the Two Social Media Options, Facebook Leads
But There is No Primary Digital Device for Social Media News
Social Networks at This Point Are Mostly an Additional Way to Get News, Rather Than a Replacement Source
Twitter and Facebook Function Differently as News Sources
Consumers Are More Likely to See Facebook News as Replaceable
Twitter News Followers Are More Mobile
Who Twitter and Facebook News Users Are
About the Survey

Content: What Facebook and Twitter Mean for News | Pew Research Center
March 19, 2012
What Facebook and Twitter Mean for News
By Amy Mitchell, Tom Rosenstiel and Leah Christian
Perhaps no topic in technology attracted more attention in 2011 than the rise of social media and its potential impact on news. “ If searching for news was the most important development of the last decade, sharing news may be among the most important of the next,” we wrote in a May 2011 report analyzing online news behavior called Navigating News Online. At the moment, Facebook and, to a lesser extent, Twitter, dominate this intersection of social media and news. As written about in detail in the Digital chapter of this report, eMarketer reports that Facebook had 133 million active users in the U.S. at the end of 2011. Facebook defines “active users” as those who interact with Facebook content at least once a month. Despite debates about defining “active users,” there is little question about the site’s popularity or its “stickiness,” the degree to which some users are there a lot: Facebook users spent an average of 423 minutes each on the site in December. By contrast, a PEJ analysis of Nielsen Net View data puts the average time on a top 25 news site at just under 12 minutes per month. Even in 2010, all but one of those top news sites, with the exception being Google News, obtained a portion of their traffic from Facebook. And in 2011, Facebook furthered the news element of its platform with developments like the Social Reader, which allows users to follow, read and share news without ever leaving the network.