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Storify now has 1.2 million users visiting its site as of March, up 50% from the prior month. During March, Storify’s stories were read 14 million times across all sites, including those were the feeds were embedded. For comparison’s sake, Storify, which launched into public beta this time last year, was averaging 6.5 million monthly views as of last August.

h. People with a household income of $250,000 and up are more likely to use the Web to stay in touch with friends and family (96 percent) than traditional ways (81 percent), according to the Shullman Luxury and Affluence Monthly Pulse. Email is the most popular Web-based method (favored by 78 percent), followed by texting (65 percent) and Facebook (55 percent), although it’s notable that among those under 35, Facebook is preferred by 69 percent. Business communication is also moving online; 89 percent prefer Web-based options versus 75 percent who use traditional ways, although among the under-35 age group, that figure falls to below 50 perce

Search traffic to publishers has taken a dive in the last eight months, with traffic from Google dropping more than 30% from August 2012 through March 2013, according to research done by BuzzFeed. While Google makes up the bulk of search traffic to publishers, traffic from all search engines has dropped by 20% in the same period.

Of the three major search engines — Google, Yahoo and Bing — only Yahoo saw growth in this period. While Yahoo grew search traffic in this period, it sent 21M referrals to publishers in March, less than half of the 48M referrals sent by Google. Traffic from Bing dropped 12%.

In the past, we've reported how referrals from social platforms like Facebook to the BuzzFeed Network were growing, and at times sending more traffic than search. While that difference was at times marginal — 5 to 10M referrals — its now sustained and significant. In March, Facebook sent 1.5x more traffic than Google, the greatest difference we've ever measured between the platforms. At the same time, we've watched traffic from other social platforms — Twitter and Pinterest -—continue to grow an audience and drive traffic traffic to publishers. "Dark social," that netherland of direct traffic, is also accelerating on the network, growing referral traffic to publishers by 52% over the past twelve months. By comparison, referrals from social platforms, i.e. the Facebooks, Twitters, Pinterests and Reddits of the world, grew by 25%. It begs the question, could direct traffic be taking the place of search?

According to a new report from consumer researcher Nielsen, Net advertising saw the biggest increase among all ad spending worldwide in the first quarter, with a 12.1 percent increase compared to a year ago at the same time.

The report, called the Global Adview Pulse, also found increases in all other media, except magazines. Radio was second with a 7.9 percent increase, followed by outdoor advertising with 6.4 percent, ads in cinemas at 4.1 percent, newspapers at 3.1 percent, and 2.8 percent for TV. Magazines dropped 1.4 percent in ad spending.

Ad budgets in North America grew by 2.1 percent, and recession-hit Europe dropped 1.4 percent — the only region to see a decline.