Nowadays,
OSNs represent a significant portion of web traffic,
comparable with search engines. Dunn et al.
[9] try to understand the similarities and differences
in the web sites users visit through OSNs
vs. through search engines. Using web traffic
logs from 17,000 digital subscriber line (DSL)
subscribers of a Tier 1 ISP in the United States,
it is found that OSN visitors are less likely to
navigate to external web sites. But when they
visit external web sites, OSN users will spend
more time at those web sites compared to search
engine users. Also, OSNs direct visitors to a narrower
subset of the web than search engines.
While web sites related to games and video are
more commonly visited from OSNs, shopping
and reference sites are common for search
engines. Finally, OSNs send users to less popular
domains more often than search engines. These
findings can be useful to ISPs in network provisioning
and traffic engineering.