StumbleUpon Tops Facebook in Social Media Traffic

StumbleUpon has passed Facebook as the top source for social media traffic in the U.S., according to Statcounter. StumbleUpon accounted for about 43% of the U.S., while Facebook accounted for about 38%. This time last year, StumbleUpon made up 30% of the traffic, while Facebook had 48%. The numbers are notable because StumbleUpon’s comparatively smaller user base — 13 million compared to Facebook’s 500 million — generates more traffic than Facebook’s, writes Oliver Chiang at Forbes. "It’s important to note, however, that StumbleUpon may generate a lot of traffic for other websites, but that does not necessarily mean it gets a lot of traffic for its own," he also notes. Indeed, Facebook recently beat Google as most visited website worldwide.

Holiday E-commerce Spending Nears $31B

For the first 56 days of the 2010 holiday season (Nov. 1 – Dec. 26), $30.81 billion has been spent online, marking a 13% increase from $27.37 billion the corresponding days last year, according to comScore. The week ending Dec. 26 generated $2.45 billion in spending, an increase of 17% compared to the corresponding week last year. Computer hardware ranks as the top-growing category for the holiday season to date with a 23% increase from last year. Books & magazines ranks second with 22% growth, followed by consumer electronics (up 21%), computer software excluding PC games (up 20%) and toys (up 16%). Other categories in the top 10 included jewelry & watches (up 11%) and apparel & accessories (up 8%).