Facebook social reader app contributes to record traffic for U.K. news site
The Guardian reached a new record of unique visitors and page impressions for Guardian.co.uk in February, and the news organization attributes 30 percent of referral traffic to Facebook. That’s up from 2 percent only six months ago.
The change is largely the result of a Facebook canvas application that lets users read Guardian stories and share them automatically via Ticker, Timeline and News Feed. This is yet another example of Open Graph driving significant traffic to third-party apps and websites. For a few days in February, Facebook even surpassed Google in referral percentage to the Guardian, though it hasn’t maintained the lead.
“I believe it is only a matter of time before it [Facebook] becomes the main driver of traffic to many core Guardian products,” said Tanya Cordrey, director of digital development for the Guardian, at the Guardian Changing Media Summit on Wednesday.
Cordrey also discussed statistics and trends related to the company’s social news app. She said more than 8 million people have added the Facebook app in five months, and about 40,000 new users sign up each day. More than 4 million people used the ad-supported app in the last four weeks and many of them read several stories per day, she added. According to AppData, the canvas app has been getting between 200,000 and 250,000 daily active users.
Of these users, “only a small percentage” elect to hide or remove stories from their Timeline, Cordrey explained. We previously identified the Guardian’s privacy controls as some of the best among social reader applications. Because most users share all the stories they read within the app, and Facebook highlights social reader activity in aggregate News Feed stories, a new audience is discovering the Guardian.
Cordrey pointed out that largest group of users for the Guardian Facebook app are between 18 and 24 years old, a demographic that is hard for news sites to reach. The app’s users are also global. According to AppData, 50 percent of users are from the U.K., but the rest are from a range of countries. Cordrey said Facebook is also unique in that the peak time for news consumption appears to be the afternoon, not around morning, lunch and dinner, which is typical for radio, TV and the web.
March 25th, 2012 at 10:47 pm
[...] ed essere parte della Rete. Approccio che risulta nel concreto molto premiante come documentato dal successo dei numeri di visitatori al sito del giornale di gran lunga superiore alle performance di altri [...]
March 27th, 2012 at 8:02 am
[...] Darwell of our sister publication, Inside Facebook, recently reported that Guardian.co.uk attributed 30% of its referral traffic in February to The Guardian‘s social [...]
March 27th, 2012 at 1:25 pm
[...] ed essere parte della Rete. Approccio che risulta nel concreto molto premiante come documentato dal successo dei numeri di visitatori al sito del giornale di gran lunga superiore alle performance di altri [...]
March 29th, 2012 at 4:03 am
[...] Want to know more about the power of The Guardian’s new Facebook Timeline app? Visit http://www.insidefacebook.com/2012/03/22/facebook-social-reader-app-contributes-to-record-traffic-fo… Share this:TwitterFacebookLike this:LikeBe the first to like this [...]
April 3rd, 2012 at 4:11 am
[...] The Guardian posted record unique visitor and page impression figures in February, which can be attributed to the ease with which Guardian stories can be shared automatically through the Facebook app to your ticker, timeline and news feed. [...]
April 5th, 2012 at 2:11 pm
[...] Case in point: according to Compete, in February Wetpaint Entertainment received more traffic from Facebook than from Google. Hey, I told you it was gonna happen. It’s because social has provided a medium for data and connection that lets us deeply relate to our audience. Increasingly, other publishers are finding the same – The Guardian most recently joined the club. [...]
July 6th, 2012 at 4:50 am
[...] and introduced the Guardian to a whole new audience we weren’t reaching. # It also drove dramatic traffic levels back to the Guardian web site which we then turned into advertising revenue for the [...]