Evaluating the effectiveness of Facebook and Twitter as new publishing platforms for newspapers

With the growing popularity of social network sites such as Facebook and Twitter, newspapers have started to use these sites as alternative platforms for news delivery. Analyzing the use of Facebook and Twitter by the top 74 U.S. newspapers, this study examines the effectiveness of social network sites as news platforms. The results showed that most of the major newspapers have adopted social network sites but reached a very limited number of subscribers. After controlling for print circulation, there is no significant correlation between the number of social network subscribers and the number of website visitors. Overall, the effectiveness of Facebook and Twitter as news platforms remained questionable.