Twitter & Facebook. The winner isâ€¦

Posted by MoneyEra on 2 November, 2009

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This item was filed under [ Monetizing Twitter ]

Twitter vs Facebook - which grows faster?

Both Twitter and Facebook are among the most popular web services in the USA, getting a lot of media attention, PR and are sometimes called “fast growing”. What does it mean? Let’s check both of them to find out how they rate against each other.

Even though both services grow very fast - as you probably read on internet in various posts or news - after taking a closer look it turns out, that they do not play in the same league. True, some may say: they are not in the same league, as one is the microblogging platform whereas another one is the leading social portal. Nevertheless I think that comparing the growth rate of the sites from ‘most frequently talked about websites’ list is worthwhile.

I came across a HitWise research, according to which Facebook wins by a lot. Bill Tancer, General Manager of HitWise says, that the Facebook domination is more and more evident especially that recently the number of visits on Twitter has been declining. This is evident for couple of month already, as you can see on the chart below. Twitter growth rate is 0.14%, while Facebook rocks at 6.10%.

Facebook vs Twitter Growth Rate

Another alarming issue for Twitter is that, according to Nielsen Online published in April 2009, Twitter is struggling to keep the users for over 30 days after they registered. The percentage of users who stop using the service is 60!

It might turn out that Twitter was the seasonal hit and its popularity is starting to decline. What is pretty shocking to me is the following: Harvard Business School report revealed, that from the moment of singing up till the moment of leaving the service for good the average Twitter user (defined by the median) publishes only 1 twit! If I were Jack Dorsey (Twitter founder) I would start worrying… It is clear that the service struggles with keeping users, which is not something that potential advertisers would appreciate. Neither it is good for any other form of monetizing the service.