Social Networks as drivers of Traffic

Interesting comment on Fred Wilson's blog:

....you might be interested to know that Twitter is Etsy's #3 referrer of transactional visits and Facebook is #4. Flickr is #2. social media can drive a ton of transactions if its configured to do so

The original post was about job creation/destruction, but that comment is very interesting - not just the fact the social nets drive value to 3rd party retail sites, but the order - Facebook is by far the most trafficked, and who would have thought Flickr would be the main driver.

But this clearly indicates where future value is for a Social Network, its interesting that Facebook for example has tried to interpose itself across the whole value stream with Beacon et al. There must be better ways of taking a share in the referral stream than it's approaches