Hitwise looks at what types of sites Twitter is driving traffic to and says it’s more similar to a social network than a search site.
It appears that Twitter is being used as a social network and means of distributing content. This is by no means the only way it is being used – just one standout trend. Twitter.com’s clickstream profile is much closer to a social network than to Search Engines or Email Services. Twitter’s clickstream differs markedly from search engines in that relatively little traffic goes to retail websites and Education (i.e. Wikipedia). It is also different from Email in that less traffic goes to Dating websites and again, to retail and Business and Finance websites.
Also, a higher share of downstream visits from Twitter.com go to entertainment websites, in particular photo sharing, and a much larger share go to Blogs and Personal Websites (7.28% in February) and to News and Media. Sounds more like blogging than email or search to me!
The following table shows the top 20 websites visited after Twitter.com in February.
