Facebook top news source for many users
For users in Germany, Facebook has become one of the most important news portals. Many now even get their news exclusively from friends on the social network, as market researchers at Innofact point out. As a result, friends are becoming opinion leaders.
"Many users invest a lot of time in the portal," says Matthias Hallmann from Innofact in an interview with Pressetext. "This is taken away from other online media." On the other hand, friends like to link to external content and explicitly refer to "interesting content" in their status updates. In this way, they even attract new readers to traditional news websites. Twitter is a prime example of the "accelerator of communication".
At just under 20 million, more than a third of German internet users are currently active on Facebook. 27% of them dedicate at least half of their online time to the network, while 12% even spend more than 70% of their web consumption on the platform. Almost one in two users uses it to get the latest news from friends and acquaintances. 26% do not visit other websites for the news and only use Facebook for information.
