Facebook is Making a Lot of Money Thanks to Coronavirus

Stuck in self-quarantine, millions of people are turning to Facebook for messaging, video calls, and news and this has resulted in a massive surge in the social network’s traffic levels.

As per the latest report from the New York Times, more than half of the articles being shared on Facebook right now are coronavirus related and the surge in traffic has also led to a 50% increase in traffic for these news publishers. This has made Facebook the go-to platform for discovering and sharing news.

Facebook has said that 90% of these clicks are coming from “power news consumers”, which is Facebook’s term for people who read and engage in news articles much more than other readers. The social network giant is now planning on targeting this audience with higher-quality information to make sure it is “being spread downstream.”

Thanks to this, more readers are now choosing reputable news publishers for information regarding the virus and helpful resources that can help against it.

Facebook’s report notes that many news outlets including The Washington Post, The Times, The Atlantic, NBC News, and many more are now seeing a traffic increase of nearly 100%.