A month after topping 1 billion Web pageviews (Omniture), People says it's become the first celebrity magazine to surpass 1 million Facebook fans, which it claims is one of the largest fanbases of all magazines on the platform.
One would expect the nation’s most widely read magazine to have a big Facebook presence. But in April 2010, People had only 23,000 fans. The magazine made a concerted effort to get its numbers up, in part by hosting sweepstakes and campaigns on the social network tied to franchises like “Sexiest Man.”
For comparison’s sake, People’s closest celeb weekly competitor, Us Weekly, has around 400,000 Facebook fans. Lady Gaga has close to 29 million fans; Justin Bieber, 22 million; and President Obama, 18 million.
Despite their growing presence on Facebook, magazines haven’t yet figured out how to monetize the platform. In the case of People, the primary benefit of its fandom is site visits; Facebook is now one of its top 10 sources of Web traffic.
