Traffic from (most) social sites skyrocketing

Gawker has released a chart that shows how much traffic social sites are sending the blog network, and the numbers are enlightening for news publishers:

The first observation is Facebook referrals are way up, which is pretty consistent across the online publishing world these days. Gawker’s numbers from StumbleUpon are rather surprising, and there’s a steady decline in traffic from Digg. Writes All Things D, which first reported the numbers: “The other big takeaway from the data is the story that many publishers have been telling in the past year or so: Social traffic is becoming as important, or more so, than search traffic from the likes of Google and Yahoo.” And the rate of growth is showing no signs of slowing anytime soon.