TEKGROUP International released the resulted of its Third Annual Social Media News Survey recently. Some findings of interest (at least to me):
Almost 90% of respondents say they use Facebook and 70% use Twitter as a primary source of news and information when following, sharing or posting. That’s more than double that of the Wall Street Journal and significantly more than CNN.
Almost half (49.6%) rate news gathered via social media sources as “roughly the same” or “more accurate” than traditional media.
Nearly 95% of survey respondents say they begin their search for news and information on a search engine. That’s not surprising. But 25% said they use Google every time searching for news stories. That really underscores the importance of the integration of social and search.
Almost 75% of survey respondents indicate they sometimes or often visit a corporate website after learning of a news story through social media channels.
Almost 75% of the respondents think that news gathered through social media channels is either slightly (36.1%) or much more (38.3%) timely than traditional news outlets.
YouTube and Flickr are being used more as news and information-sharing tools.
The full report is available at: http://www.tekgroup.com.