Although Facebook recently admitted that Twitter was in its rear-view mirror, it appears that Twitter may be moving out of eyeshot. September’s U.S. comScore data has just been released and it appears that the gap between Facebook and Twitter is widening. Facebook grew by over 3 million unique visitors during the month of September, from 92.2 million unique visitors in August to 95.5 unique visitors in September. Twitter, on the other hand, is completely flatlining, barely growing over the past month. In August, Twitter received 20.8 million unique visits in the U.S. compared to 20.9 million unique visits in September.
As Facebook nears 100 million unique visits in the U.S., the gap between the social network and Twitter is widening. In April, the gap was around 50 million unique visitors, with Twitter pulling on 17 million unique visitors and Facebook drawing in 67 million unique visitors. Now, the gap has grown to nearly 75 million unique visitors between to the two sites in the U.S.
As we’ve said in the past, these estimates only count traffic to Twitter.com. It’s important to note that since more than half of Twitter users don’t even go to the Website and use Twitter apps to consume and publish Tweets, Twitter’s total audience could be larger.
But it should be interesting to see how Facebook and Twitter fare in international numbers. I suspect that while both will continue to show growth in comScore’s worldwide numbers, Facebook’s growth will probably take place at a faster pace. This happened in July, after Facebook turned on the everyone button. Facebook may see strong numbers in September, after launching versions of Facebook Lite in Europe and Asia. Twitter is also looking to make more of a presence internationally, planning to launch versions in French, German, Italian and Spanish soon.
I hardly use the website to send tweet. Only go there to block spam, and not even all the time for that.
The writing is on the wall, folks are getting bored of both Twitter and Facebook, next hype please
Agree. Twitter, despite the hype, is utterly pointless.
I have to agree with you but expand the pointlessness to FB as well, though on a scale of pointlessness, Twitter is by far more so.
Jon @ WoodMarvels.com
Facebook has its uses as a friends network – for sharing invites, photos, etc.
Twitter is… err… um…
Yeah.
If you discover how to use trending topics, local search, keywords, etc, then I think you’d change your tune. Twitter isn’t useful for status updates–It’s by FAR the fastest real-time news source.
Except alexa, which is browserbased, comscore etc monitor traffic through net.
There is NO difference between an desktop app using http and a webpage browser, STOP mentioning twitter has desktop app users in every blogpost for god’s sake ………….
To be fair, I rarely visit the FB site anymore. I use FB & Twitter through tweetdeck.
I visit facebook on the web because there is more information to consume. Tweetdeck is my main source of tweeting. So I would take a wild guess and say twitter is has at least 2 or 3 times more users than their website actually gets. Rarely do I ever see something coming from the web based version of twitter. My tweeps are always using Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, Seismic, etc.
Another milestone in FB becoming the OS of the web. Scary stuff. Think: no personal URL’s if you’re not famous enough, no using any app that FB doesn’t want you to use, no earning revenue off your own content etc.
I think it is a matter of time before twitter and fb develop a partner program like youtube has. Users that are able to create content intereaction are valuable.. that said much of the shine has worn off these sites.
Indeed, I don’t know anyone who uses the Twitter website. Isn’t there a way to count the number of visitors including Twitter apps?
The comparison is for “unique visitors” so if you’ve visited the site once in the entire month, you’ll be counted. The actual numbers won’t fluctuate THAT much in the end.
Meaningless comparison. I get far more business value out of Twitter than I ever will out of FB. FB is still a toy that I could live without quite easily. Not so with Twitter. I would end up starving, or get fired…or both.
Yes, Twitter offers so many more features that Facebook can only dream of…
Spammer.
Kinda comparing Apples to Herpes. Twitters growth was bound to flat line. Give them time, i’m sure they will continue to grow.
However, Twitter will NEVER be as big a facebook. it’s too business centric, and i don’t see it being used by the Joe Citizen with nothing to sell.
The story literally contradicts itself with regard to off-site Twitter traffic. You report that Twitter is falling further behind Facebook but qualify the headline by stating “…these estimates only count traffic to Twitter.com. It’s important to note that since more than half of Twitter users don’t even go to the Website and use Twitter apps to consume and publish Tweets, Twitter’s total audience could be larger.”
Could be? By your own acknowledgement, Twitter’s total audience IS larger than reported. All due respect, this story is half-baked.
Twitter may continue to grow a bit as people start using it to say things like, “Hey, check out my Wave about this.”
Then it will slowly fade the way of the fax.
http://www.exam...r-now?#comments
you reckon twitter will one day discontinue?
april 2012
And anyone thought that Twitter would continue to grow past the media hype… at least FB is half useful.
Although this post will be of interest to some, the numbers as presented are not very important unless you have a mass advertising mentality. It’s tiresome to see the comparisons between Facebook and Twitter, even though it does grab headlines. I will grant you that the sites do compete in certain areas, but the post you present doesn’t do the topic justice. One is a social network and the other a microblog.
From Main Street perspective, Facebook is much easier to use than Twitter, so of course its growth will persist as all Web 2.0 sites continue to mainstream. It would be much more useful to see a comparison between active users of each site, as most Twitter users barely use the site. Most of its 2009 growth was “Oprah tweeters” and the like. Twitter is more specialized than Facebook and requires more imagination and knowledge to use. Very few people know how to use the site, @guykawasaki ’s efforts notwithstanding ,^)
I have found your posts comparing the two in terms of the “battle for the status” much more insightful. Status and mobility are Twitter’s DNA, and I believe it will continue to add value there.
I also like your coverage of Facebook’s desire to open due to Twitter’s traction with search.
All the best-
Twitter really needs to add RT and Location APIs that give it an advantage over Facebook. In the ~year that I’ve been using twitter it hasn’t evolved much
You can see the kink in Twitter’s growth, from exponential to linear – this is the inflection point where people realized there’s no “there” there.
I find it hard to believe that people who prefer to use Twitter offline NEVER VISIT twitter.com in the WHOLE MONTH. We’re talking uniques per month here. I really don’t think the “actual” number of users is higher than those numbers
predictable – traffic starts to drop as TV shows stop talking about it (or talk about it less and less)
Once Twitter opens open language support they will start gaining on Facebook. That’s the only advantage Facebook has at the moment.
I have already a site for tweeting in about 31 different languages but it seems people are not interested in tweeting..
Comscore is an unfair metric to use.
EVERY user of facebook uses the site, whereas most twitter users access the site through its API on external apps, something comscore almost certainly doesn’t track correctly.
I don’t by that, I almost always read TC in a news reader but definitely a couple times a month I go to techcrunch.com for whatever reason. Similarly with twitter users, they all visit the site once or twice a month regardless of if they use the API all day long, and should be included in the monthly uniques
Travel in the USA has fallen further behind vs Europe.
Please note that we are only considering rail travel and that there is a significant number of people traveling through freeways and by plane.
You know everything is just going to get merged.
It’s inevitable.
That 1 billion users is gonna be hard to get to now.
I don’t really understand why everyone compares Facebook with Twitter. They both are totally different businesses and attract therefore different users. They might be in some fields similar, but still Facebook is for friends and family member and Twitter seems to be mostly for stranger. I know lots of people using Facebook, but none of them is using Twitter or ever heard anything about it. Some heard it, gave it a try, but didn’t understand it or didn’t see any core value.
No one compares FB and Twitter except Techcrunch.
I still use twitter.com but not as regular as i use to before. I was also not so busy on facebook until now i’m using facebook more often than twitter and any other site.
facebook status updates is what eats up the twitter updates. facebook made it better with comments/replies directly under your update.
How many people use the Facebook “everyone” feature? I think most people don’t even know about it?
I don’t buy this for a second. My guess is Twitter’s userbase is half the age of Facebook. Hell, my 60 year old mom is on Facebook. It’s great for posting pics and updating your family and friends, but for business it stinks. Twitter will win in the long run.
because your 60-year old mother will want to do business?
Hey Travis, kiss my taco. No spamola. You’re just a twit
So much for being the pulse of the planet. More like the pulse of the foursquare-using early adopter morons.
I’ve felt all along that Twitter’s dominance would fall by late summer. Its platform is too impersonal and too limiting. There’s just so much more you can do with LinkedIn and Facebook.
I like the openness of Twitter over the close doors of Facebook. IMO. I also don’t consider these numbers to be real cause one entrepreneur might have 20 accounts, one for each site that he operates.
Does anybody know what the Facebook definition is of a unique visitor ? E.g. I know people who have 11 profiles merely to have several Mafia Wars characters, do they count for 11 unique visitors? If these are all unique visitors and given there are plenty of FB apps as addicting as Mafia Wars I think the number of FB visitors is an overestimation of the true number of people using Facebook.
It’s easy to say twitter’s figures should be inflated to count users of apps that don’t visit the twitter.com site, but what about users that don’t visit the facebook.com site either.
I use the iPhone facebook app for facebook and echofon for twitter but if I am on a PC I am far more likely to visit twitter.com then facebook.com
I think it’s an apples and oranges discussion sometimes. Yes, there are people who choose to be active on both channels but one works perfectly on its own. It’s like rating techcrunch.com versus microsoft.com: they are both sites that target a similar (yet slightly different) audience but are measured in the same way.
gonna see a flat growth in twitter’s graph??
Farther.
All this Twitter vs. Facebook talk is just nonsense. When used effectively, they serve two completely different purposes.
One person put it well:
“Facebook is for connecting with those you already know or knew. Twitter is for connecting with those you have yet to meet.”
As you rightly mentioned, from my point of view, the difference is gonna come from internationalisation. I’m speeking as a French user, and started really recently using Twitter. French marketing professional aren’t using twitter as a suport for digital campaign yet. It’s starting, but only starting. On the other hand we are using FB since more than a year. The micro blogging is still brand new in our market, and I’m sure we can expect a significant groth in the upcoming months.
folks, new twitter users that would represent growth are exactly the kind of people that would visit the website. they are the last people to find out about this tech trend, they are not the savvy types that will be running their account off desktop and off-site apps.
sorry twitter, you’ve now peaked. good luck.
I’m piling onto the opinions that this comparison is irrelevant. Despite flat traffic at Twitter.com, you’d be hard-pressed to say that its influence is doing anything but growing exponentially. Let’s compare who’s bigger and more influential when we see mature revenue models.
There is only so much time in the day, even for those with their thumbs glued to their tiny keyboards. I kinda wish there was a purpose, esp. for small businesses to get some mileage out of Twitter because if it actually led to real biz, then it might have some value to those who don’t like the google ad search monopoly. But…..maybe not. Everyone eventually gets older than 25.
I have a Twitter account, but it could go away tomorrow and I wouldn’t really miss it.
I do use Facebook every day to keep in touch with friends and family.
FB V’s twitter, I asked for comments and @OxfordSpring replied with what I thought was a very good answer
“twitter is about making new friends based on interests, Facebook about old established ones based on geography.”
my own opinion for what it’s worth, FB is not narrow enough for me. there is too much going on. FB is also very difficult to stop bleed from one group of friends to another, in twitter it’s much easier to grab a couple of persona and follow different groups based on the facets of your life/interests.
Things like this are always more different than they seem on the surface.
First of all, they’re not the same type of site. Sure, there’s status updates, but it’s completely different.
Secondly, unique visitors how? Visits to the site? I view at work and at home, am I two unique visitors? To any analytics package, I am. To something like Comscore? Well, er, um.. the numbers are estimates at best.
Third, Twitter basically began as a cell phone platform, and it still is. Sure you can have an anecdotal account of “if I am on a PC I am far more likely to visit twitter.com then facebook.com” but I’m willing to bet for most people it’s the other way around. Why? Because facebook is limited on a mobile device. It’s not quite the same experience as the site. For twitter? The mobile devices (and desktop clients) are FAR more advanced than twitter.com. Groups, columns, searches as a group, etc etc etc. Twitter’s strength is in its API, NOT its site.
I’m not going to get rich off either platform, so I couldn’t care less which is the “winner” not that there’s only room for one (that is just silly). I just don’t like it when people complete ignore how things are used in the equasion.
FB might as well be Classmates.com. They want to be Twitter and the only area worth competing for is what Twitter is all about. FB has a huge infrastructure and organization built to support an outdated social network with heavy profiles that are worthless. The latest Tweet/update is all that matters. Heavy profiles taking up resources are enough dead wood to sink FB.