Online news benefiting from Twitter growth

Online news websites are seeing significant benefits from the growing popularity of Twitter in the UK, according to new figures from Hitwise.

The statistics show that Twitter has risen from being the 2,953rd most visited site in the UK to 291st place in the space of 12 months.

Overall, it is the 23rd most popular social network and sends ten per cent of its downstream traffic to online news and media websites, with BBC News being the seventh most visited news site after Twitter.

Hitwise's Robin Goad said that it is likely that traffic to the microblogging service is higher when access via mobile phones and third-party applications is taken into account.

"As a source of traffic Twitter is still in its infancy, but it is becoming more important every day," he added.

"A number of news sites, blogs, and video and picture websites already rely on Twitter for a significant amount of their traffic."

Twitter is currently more popular than Digg in the US, with the former overtaking the latter in terms of traffic last week, according to Hitwise.