Navigation Characteristics — 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.