The Guardian named most popular UK newspaper site on Twitter
The Guardian has beaten off The Telegraph and Daily Mail to top a Searchmetrics survey of the most popular UK newspaper sites on Twitter.
The left-leaning title beat off its right of centre rivals by driving an average of 392,358 tweets per week to the micro blogging platform; significantly ahead of its next nearest rival the Telegraph which managed just 307,690.
Slipping into third place was the Daily Mail which was unable to translate its high readership figures into as many tweets, generating just 237,381 tweets per week. The title did manage to claim the most tweeted story overall however with a tail about a YouTube TV show that teaches dog owners how to make homemade pet food, which generated no less than 77,000 tweets.
Marcus Tober, CTO and founder of Searchmetrics, commented: “Research indicates nearly three-fifths of Twitter's 15 million UK users follow at least one national newspaper brand or journalist. Twitter is an ideal tool for driving additional traffic to news content and our research indicates that many leading newspaper sites are succeeding in this area. Interestingly our list of the most tweeted stories indicates it’s not always the biggest and most high profile news stories that get the most tweets. Often it’s the quirkier stories or those with a human-interest angle that catch people’s imagination and go viral.”
To arrive at its list Searchmetrics calculated the number of tweets per week generated by the UK’s 11 leading newspaper sites.
Most Popular UK Newspaper Websites on Twitter
The Guardian (theguardian.com), 392,358 tweets per week
The Daily Telegraph (telegraph.co.uk), 307,690 tweets per week
Daily Mail (dailymail.co.uk), 237,381 tweets per week
Independent (independent.co.uk), 214,868 tweets per week
The Mirror (mirror.co.uk), 113,194 tweets per week
Financial Times (ft.com), 61,065 tweets per week
Daily Express (express.co.uk), 24,165 tweets per week
Daily Record (dailyrecord.co.uk), 11,107 tweets per week
The Times (thetimes.co.uk), 8,772 tweets per week
Daily Star (dailystar.co.uk), 6,556 tweets per week
The Sun (thesun.co.uk), 3,531 tweets per week