According to statistics released by analytics firm, StatCounter, Facebook has retained its place as the largest source of traffic from social media to global websites in March 2010.
Facebook accounts for nearly half the traffic generated from social networks and other social media sites, contributing to 48% of the total. The next largest referrer is StumbleUpon, which sends 25% of the total social media traffic. Twitter ranks third and accounts for 10% of the traffic sent from social sites.
StatCounter has arrived at these figures after analysing 13 billion page views from all their member sites. Their CEO, Aodhan Cullen, says, “From a business perspective the findings suggest that there is merit in having a corporate Facebook page or Twitter account.”
Quite surprisingly, StumbleUpon has managed to remain the second largest driver of social media traffic through the last year. In the U.S.A; it was the topmost source of social traffic in March.
YouTube, reddit, Digg and MySpace are next in line, in terms of driving traffic, with 6%, 4%, 2% and 2% contribution to total social media referrals respectively.
However, Cullen warns that the social media market is known to fluctuate quite sharply and during the last Christmas and New Year season, Facebook was not only at the top but accounted for almost 75% of the traffic referrals.
Last year, the top three slots were occupied by StumbleUpon, Facebook and MySpace, in thet order.
Now, with the recent introduction of Annotations and @anywhere by Twitter and the ‘Like’ button by Facebook the situation could change all over again.
