Drudge Generates More News Traffic Than Social Media

tcd004 writes "A report released today by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism shows that the Drudge Report is a far more important driver of online news traffic than Facebook or Twitter. In fact, for the top 25 news websites, Twitter barely registers as a source of traffic. The report hits on several other interesting findings about news behavior."

Comments

Ugly

[dragonhunter21]

It might just be my connection, but for being such an important site, DrudgeReport.com is one uuuuugly site.

Re:Ugly

[tripleevenfall]

It beats the hell out of the network news sites, with their pervasive cookies, auto-start videos, and general unwanted flash-a-palooza.

Re:Ugly

[alen]

in the middle in a huge font is the story of the day. the rest of the stories are in the other columns. makes it easy to get a quick read of the daily news for busy people

Re:Ugly

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't read the drudge report, but the layout beats the hell out of most sites, slashdot included.

Javascript isn't always a good thing and on news sites (or aggregators), it's just unnecessary.

Re:Ugly

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. Everything to program the neanderthal Retardicans needs to be right at the front - they have a limited size buffer in those protohuman brains, if you overflow it everything else goes into the bit-bucket rather than into long-term storage.

Way to elevate the discussion there, chief--call your ideological opponents subhuman. I could [i]so[/i] go all Godwin's Law on you right now and we're only 10 posts into this thing.

Re:Ugly

[brit74]

That's why I only go to websites with rainbow colors and flashing comic sans font for information. Also, these guys are doing everything right: http://www.theonion.com/articles/the-white-nation-will-never-resume-its-rightful-pl,20303/

Re:Ugly

[tripleevenfall]

I would gripe that if you look at either CNN or Fox (or whomever's) website, it's so busy that it's offensive, even after you take out scripts, flash, videos, etc. Simplify. (Maybe just a personal preference)

My bane lately is the trend toward these major news sites linking to "stories" that are only videos.

I don't WANT to watch video unless I ask for it. I want to see text. I want to see a version of the information that is quiet and doesn't waste bandwidth or require flash. I want to be able to scan relevant details without clunking through some 3 minute clip just to get the one detail I'm after.

(sorry. rant over)

Re:Ugly

[TubeSteak]

It beats the hell out of the network news sites, with their pervasive cookies, auto-start videos, and general unwanted flash-a-palooza.

Drudge has a javascript refresh in place, which is how they get their massive page views every month.
I really hate pointless page refreshing.

var timer = setInterval("autoRefresh()", 1000 * 60 * 3);
function autoRefresh(){self.location.reload(true);}

Re:Ugly

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

I don't read the drudge report, but the layout beats the hell out of most sites, slashdot included.

slashdot = stagnated.

Wow, it's not very often you get a chance to post something semi-on-topic! Congrats!!

Re:Ugly

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Why am I not surprised: http://www.kristopeit.com/person.php?person_id=207

Re:Ugly

[ThurstonMoore]

I have to agree the auto refresh is very annoying. It's not like the page is updated every few minutes.

Re:Ugly

[Anonymous Coward]

It's really impressive when you consider that that code is comment out.

Re:Ugly

[rcamans]

You are such a clueless shit. I am not surprised that I can find you on slashdot.

Redirects

[AmiMoJo]

Don't most links on Twitter go via redirects like bit.ly? In that case I'm not sure how you would tell if traffic is coming from Twitter.

Re:Redirects

[x*yy*x]

Even if they go via bit.ly the referrer still shows them coming from Twitter.

It's a stupid comparison anyway, people go to Drudge to read news (I guess, I've never used it before) and Twitter isn't the same. Also Drudge only contains links to news sites, so there isn't anything else to click on anyway.

Re:meta refresh

[Cytotoxic]

Drudge forces a reload of a linked site? Neat feature, how's that work?

Interesting

[bigsexyjoe]

Not only are social media and "web 2.0" overrated, but apparently css is too. Actually the grand champion of traffic drivers is probably good ole' email.

Attention, Attention!

[GoNINzo]

Just so we're clear here, a news aggregator site creates more traffic to news sites than a social media site.

Breaking news: People reading a news site are more likely to read other news sites than people playing farmville, news at 11.

No Surprise--Facebook is apparently not for news

[ktappe]

Everyone I know who is on Facebook is annoyed when I post news stories/links. They all seem to envision FB as being thoughtless fun. Sports posts are fine, what I had for breakfast is fine, people dying in Syria or Exxon buying the fracking rights under their land are verbotten. Seriously. FB is the new vast wasteland, so is it any wonder there are fewer news clicks coming from there?

Influences the news cycle

[Anonymous Coward]

Whatever you might think of Drudge's political leanings, there are a few things to consider:

* If it's on Drudge the larger news outlets will soon be talking about it. His page has become what the NYT front page used to be. The 6-year old kid and the TSA agent story became a mainstream story because it was on Drudge. This morning there's TSA inspecting an infant. Expect that one to be picked up by the news outlets soon.
* Drudge has influence over the political environment. One of the best ways to get a glimpse of the upcoming presidential race is to follow Drudge, even if it's with a "know you enemy" POV.
* Most of Drudge is simply links to other news outlets. Occasionally he has his own exclusives. 90% or more of the news links take you AWAY from Drudge to sites with an array of political leanings, both right and left.

Re:Influences the news cycle

[brit74]

> "90% or more of the news links take you AWAY from Drudge to sites with an array of political leanings, both right and left."

Heh, heh. Drudge isn't really linking to left-leaning articles. I used to visit Drudge for a while. Pretty soon, I'd play a game called "name the political party". Whenever they had a headline about a politician where I didn't recognize who they were or which political party they were with, I'd play a game called "name the political party". I was actually pretty good at it. If the headline was downplaying a politician's wrongdoing, then you could pretty much guess he was Republican. If it was a blistering headline attacking the politician, it was either a Democrat or a Republican that they were turning their back on because he had dome something they couldn't condone. The very fact that I could guess the political party based on how harshly they attacked them in the headline should be pretty good evidence of a right-wing bias.

I also thought it was interesting in the last election that they refused to give the electoral vote count between Obama and McCain, choosing, instead to show the popular vote. Of course, the electoral vote tends to magnify the gap between the winner and loser, and they wanted to minimize how badly McCain lost. I'd bet money that they showed the electoral count and minimized the popular vote count during the Bush-Gore election, since Gore won the popular vote.

Do you really think Drudge would get an approving nod from Rush Limbaugh if he wasn't a right winger? "Matt Drudge is the man who is to the Internet, what I am to broadcasting." -- Rush Limbaugh

I think Drudge's favorite newsource is Andrew Breitbart, who is most definitely conservative.

Re:No Surprise--Facebook is apparently not for new

[0123456]

Perhaps the reasons too few people care about US foreign policy, Wikileaks information, and voting is because they're busy playing Farmville or catching up on the lasted Royal Wedding details.

I suspect it's more that they've tried voting for people who promise Change! and discovered that it makes no difference.

Re:FudgePacking more exciting than being sociable

[GrumpySteen]

Schizophrenia is a hell of a disease.

Re:No Surprise--Facebook is apparently not for new

[Unequivocal]

I wouldn't call FB a wasteland, I would call it an async cocktail party. Not many people want to be bummed out by the guy with all the global warming crisis news at the cocktail party. It's just not the right venue -- people go to FB for a very specific, personal purpose, which in many cases (I think) bears a lot of similarity to the kind of communication that occurs at cocktail parties (bumping into people who you haven't seen in awhile, 1 and 2 degree of separation conversations, and lots of random tidbits from a whole bunch of people).

Note: If you don't like the word cocktail party, call it "kegger" or "house party" or whatever your demographic uses for same social function.

Facebook good for breaking news

[Relayman]

You need new Facebook friends. My wife is connected with a bunch of journalists and she gets breaking news through it before the MSM picks it up. For example, when President Obama announced he was going to speak to the nation a week ago Sunday, she heard about it first on Facebook. Then we turned on the television. But news like this doesn't need a link so the news sites might not have gotten a hit from this.

Drudge generates more inane comment traffic than..

[ajdub]

I'm always amused by the comment sections on stories that get linked by Drudge. It's like a freakin' firehose that sprays misspelled conspiracy theories about illegal space alien Obama clones that maraud across the countryside in the thick of night, eating babies and freedom while dropping turds of poisonous socialism that are festering with job eating worms.

Re:Drudge generates more inane comment traffic tha

[DerekLyons]

And other than political orientation - that's different from Slashdot how? (Yeah, I grant most Slashdotters can actually spell.)

Re:Not for Massive Page Views

[Bing Tsher E]

By 'proper' you mean 'billable hours for me and my buddies,' correct?

Re:Drudge: Site Design from 1997

[Shotgun]

Counts just as much as the liberal propaganda.

I'm more into the libertarian propaganda lately, though.

Re:Drudge generates more inane comment traffic tha

[halivar]

(Yeah, I grant most Slashdotters can actually spell.)

You must be new here.

/checks-uid

Wait...

Re:How Odd

[webdog314]

Wow, I'd mod this flamebait, but I really don't think you're that smart.

Did it even occur to you that if 90% of the media is contrary to your chosen political view, that it might actually be due to the fact that *you* are the "radical" and there might be a legitimate reason they disagree with you? Or even that your political view itself is too "exclusive" to allow unbiased reporting in *any* news organization?

Drudge: popular through terse, consistent design

[Loopy]

Drudge succeeds at the newsfeed game for the same reason Google did as a search engine: Just The Facts, Ma'am(tm). Go to CNN, Fox, Huffpo, whatever and you are bombarded by flashy-blinky-OMGTHEYMAKETHATCOLOR? bits of stuff that may or may not be related to news. And drudge is text, making it easy to view on mobile devices.

I really don't care if my news site has New and Improved(tm) columns and colors every 6 months. I'm only here for the data, bro.