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New York Times Twitter followers now more than double the number of print readers

11/17/11
by Nicole Martinelli
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The New York Times just sent a shout out over Twitter announcing it has reached four million followers.

With this new record, the Times now has over twice as many readers on the microblogging service than its most popular print edition, the Sunday paper.

Circulation is up for print paper too, to 1.6 million copies. Growth is slow for the paper, however, up just 0.2 percent for the first time in five years.

The Times is the top-selling Sunday paper in the U.S., followed by the Houston Chronicle and the Los Angeles Times. It massively outruns those two outlets on Twitter, they have 27,947 followers and 186,423 followers, respectively.

Skeptics of social media take note.

Hat tip: Gabriel Sama

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New York Times Twitter users

Submitted by Anonymous on 11/21/11.

Even though the total number of Twitter followers is high, the click-throughs on articles from Twitter is still very low, under 2% of the Times's total traffic. http://www.journalism.org/analysis_report/twitter_0

Twitter users are notorious for tweeting a headline without reading it, and then followers are notorious for not clicking on it.

Google is still driving much more traffic than Facebook or Twitter. Much more. http://www.journalism.org/analysis_report/google_drives_most_users

That will probably change, but the change is coming slowly.

James Breiner, director, Global Business Journalism, Tsinghua University

your point?

Submitted by Anonymous on 11/28/11.

No one knows how many subscribers to the Sunday paper actually read it. (If you want to make the distinction that they pay for it - as opposed to Twitter followers, that's another story - but not the argument you're trying to make).

Also, the point isn't what online vehicle drives the most traffic but that that many more people want to follow the NYT on Twitter....

Chris

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