NY Times traffic from social media grows

Traffic to NYTimes.com via social media and blogs continues to grow at an impressive rate. VentureBeat reports that traffic to the site from Twitter grew nearly four-fold from Dec 08 – Dec 09. Visits from Facebook links more than doubled, while visits from blogs grew by about 20 – 25%. Contrast this to WSJ’s site, where traffic from blogs actually went down, and traffic from Twitter and Facebook didn’t grow nearly as much. Traffic from blogs to traditional media sites was also down year-to-year. The total referral traffic to the NY Times site is still marginal – it accounts for about 7 – 8% of overall visits. But that’s impressive growth. And you have to wonder how the New York Times paywall will affect this sort of trend.