Social Networks Drive News Consumption

There's probably a very good reason the New York Times will allow virtually unrestricted access to readers who arrive at the online site from Facebook or Twitter. Some 75 percent of online news consumers say they get news forwarded through email or posts on social networking sites and 52 percent say they share links to news with others using social networking sites and email.

Some 51 percent of Facebook users who are also online news consumers say that on a typical day they get news items from people they follow. Another 23 percent follow news organizations or individual journalists on social networking sites. See http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Online-News/Summary-of-Findings.aspx.

As with most applications, some users are active than others. About 27 percent of users share 87 percent of the stories.

CNN's research says 27% of us share 87% of news links | Media | guardian.co.uk