Facebook is leaving Twitter in the dust, says Hitwise

October 29, 2009 | Kim-Mai Cutler | Comments | |

twitter-facebook

Here’s a mind-boggling statistic: Facebook.com makes up 6 percent of all U.S. Internet visits, according to web research firm Hitwise. And it’s leaving Twitter in the dust.

Hitwise general manager of global research, Bill Tancer, wrote:

I believe this figure confirms our original hypothesis of Twitter-stall due to a drop in new users. As Facebook continues to grow, its user-base across Mosaic types shows that its user-base is becoming ubiquitous. Twitter by contrast was showing greater coverage amongst types earlier in its growth phase. Since Twitter’s decline in July, the number of over-indexing has narrowed significantly, indicating that early growth may have been the result of significant trail behavior leading up to this summer.

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Twitter.com’s traffic has not only put on the brakes, but it’s starting to take a dip, according to Hitwise data.

Now, there are reasons to exercise a bit of skepticism here — web traffic is not a great measure of whether Twitter’s overall growth is slowing or even reversing. About 80 percent of users do not access Twitter through the Web site, but instead through other clients, according to TwitStat. So this could mean either that: A) Twitter is still growing but is seeing a greater share of its users turn to outside clients, or B) it is genuinely slowing.

In fact, here’s what Twitter co-founder Ev Williams had to say on the subject at last week’s Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. (The video below should skip ahead to his answer, so you won’t have to watch all 36 minutes unless you want to):

“It’s growing in some areas and slowing in others. We’re seeing growth internationally and in mobile. [Traffic] is not a very good gauge. Our U.S. Twitter.com traffic has probably slowed temporarily. There are some things we’re launching that will pick that back up.”

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About the Author, Kim-Mai Cutler

Kim-Mai was born and raised a stone's throw from Apple headquarters in Cupertino by a devout Hewlett-Packard family. After attending UC Berkeley, Kim-Mai worked for Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires in New York, Los Angeles, London and Buenos Aires. Follow her on Twitter at @kimmaicutler, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

  • nilim000
    Facebook continues to grow, its user-base across Mosaic types shows that its user-base is becoming ubiquitous.Everybody likes facebook.
    Timeshare Resales
  • csun
    When people think of social media, Twitter and Facebook are the first to come to mind. But comparing the two is comparing apples and oranges.

    Twitter is way simpler than Facebook. Its a text-only communication tool. Facebook has profile pages, photos, networks, marketplace, events calendar, almost 100,000 applications.

    Comparing any website to Facebook would only lead to the conclusion that Facebook leaves others in the dust.
  • You're totally right. We often compare the two because they're so ubiquitous.

    But the thing is -- as a blog that's always on the look out for new technologies gaining traction, we should be aware of other companies on the rise. In 2005, MySpace had at least 60 million users to Facebook's 8 million, and then you know the story from there. They have also always been pretty different from each other too...

    So maybe the news here is that Facebook and Twitter are more complementary, and less competitive than we think. And that's a story too.
  • csun
    I understand your points. I probably got too excited when I saw the headline with "[left] in the dust" and thought it was a slight towards Twitter. And I just wanted to stick up for them, cause they've done a great job.
  • chad818
    I couldn't agree more. I really don't even see the basis for such a comparison. Again, Facebook is a "come one - come all" social medium whereas Twitter is more targeted. It would likely be a mistake for Twitter to give up its niche in pursuit of Facebook.
  • kalimckibben
    I think Facebook's continued rise is somewhat misleading - not that it isn't rising, but that there are many bogus and misleading accounts. I have several friends that have as many as 6 Facebook accounts due to gaming the game systems. Games such as Farmtown, Yoville & others reward players for invites & recruiting. They create additional accounts, complete with multiple Gmail and/or Yahoo emails to gain points for those games. (One person I know has 10 accounts just for gaming.)
    How many users play those games, and of those users, how many have additional accounts?
  • Comparing Facebook to Twitter is like comparing the SMS function of an iphone to the iphone as a whole. I have no doubt that Facebook with so many more functions in it, will provide a more rounded experience and lots more reasons to remain a place to meet people over time.
    http://www.onesherpa.com
  • AlexandrZ
    I think is need time for Twitter to grow like Facebook. Facebook is high in one level. There is no reason to compare they yet.
  • Facebook take a long time to get famous as this, and twitter must do, too. But I think twitter never do like facebook because facebook has more features than twitter, and user can get more services from facebook than twitter.
  • Does that number take into account all the hits that Twitter gets through third-party services and mobile?
  • No it doesn't. That's why I look at this with a bit of skepticism. There are probably a lot of users accessing the service without the Web site. It's still a little ominous that traffic is plateauing, however.
  • Name
    People like to say that these studies show Twitter is being passed up by Facebook due to 3rd party apps but dont forget that a lot of people also use an app to access Facebook rather than go to Facebook.com. I almost never actually go to Facebook.com but use the Facebook app on my iPhone everyday. The only reason to go on Facebook.com instead of an app is if you want to play games. I dont know how the person above can say that Facebook has huge numbers because of people making fake or multiple accounts. Do you actually think all of the accounts on Twitter are legit accounts? There are people who have over 100 twitter accounts just accumulating usernames and tons of spam accounts.
  • Paul
    What, no mention of flickr or lastfm or dailymail? They're 3 example of the trillions of other websites that are nothing like or have anything to do with Facebook.
  • PHWalsh
    Very good article mate, been loving a lot of your stuff recently.

    Something that I came across recently that you may be intersted in is this website (www.theisbook.com) that generates your Facebook Status for you when you’re not feeling very creative:

    http://www.theisbook.com/status-generator/

    Check it out and thank me later

    Keep up the good work, I look forward to reading more of your stuff.