Twitter surpasses Digg as it surges on Inauguration day

By January 21 2009, 10:48 am 4 Comments
Tagged: , , , , , , ,

Did you Twitter your way through Inauguration day? A lot of people did and according to Hitwise Twitter has now surpassed fellow social media site Digg for the first time.

It was pretty cool yesterday to soak it all up. Hitwise says that the market share of visits to Twitter surpassed Digg for the first time since launch and was ranked 84 and one above Digg at 85 in the Computers and Internet category.

No surprise was the fact that a major driver of traffic to Twitter was last week’s US Airways plane crash in to the Hudson River, which I blogged about last week with that amazin pic. I was bowled over by the whole thing how the pic was shot on an iPhone and posted on Twitter. It really showed the power and reach of the service.

Hitwise has interesting numbers on the shift in traffic to Twitter from users aged 25-34 as well. Since last year when it was getting just 12% of traffic from that group it is now getting nearly 45% for the four weeks ending January 17. That’s an incredible shift and Digg is pulling in less than half of that for the same age group.

I really like Digg and we use it a lot in the office. It’s one of the stalwarts of the early social media scene and was one of the examples that people always point to to illustrate how users in Web 2.0 were shaping the news agenda. Digg seems as busy and as much talked about as ever, it’s just now being overshadowed by the service of the moment.

The other interesting stat Hitwise had was where Twitter’s traffic was coming from. Where as more than a third of Digg’s comes via Google, Twitter is getting its from social networks. Pretty obvious reason why as many use it within Facebook and kill two bird’s with one stone using Twitter as both their status update and their Tweet. Personally I look at Facebook about once a week and Twitter every hour (okay several times an hour). A year ago my Facebook usage was much much higher. Same for many I’m guessing.

I suppose that reflects the fact that Twitter is content creation, each tweet a mini blog post, as opposed to a service that tags and highlights news like Digg. It is really embeded in the fabric of social media, the way conversations spider off in many directions but all come back to the Twitter stream, rather than bolted onto it.

That seems to underscore the point as to where Twitter’s future might lie and it will be one of the big stories this year as to who bags Twitter as I’m sure someone will. Surely, Mark Zuckerberg must have seen the endless Twitter coverage that the service racked in the last few weeks and is thinking “Facebook could really do with Twitter”.

There was an avalanche of reports about Twitter covering the Inauguration ceremony as it linked up with Current TV so you could send your Tweets in, which were then featured on screen. The Twitter groundswell is really growing. More evidence of that at the weekend as Dan Wootton the showbiz editor of the News of the World plugged Twitter in the paper.

More and more people are getting it although there was a bizarre report yesterday in Forbes blogged about by Mike Butcher at Techcrunch about how “Twitter is Not Loved in Europe”. Apparently it hasn’t caught on.

As
Mike pointed out “this bizarre attack on European companies seems to
ignore a few things. For starters, Twitter was going just fine in
Europe until they cut the SMS service, unlike in the US where it
remains. But that hasn’t stopped it. We now have celebs galore on
Twitter in the UK at least, and some are even conspiring to bring the
masses on board. Meanwhile, we like Twitter so much in Europe that we
are creating our own versions. Just Ask Shoutem in Croatia and Blip in
Poland”.

 

[Twitter]

  • http://annemccrossan.typepad.com/a_bit_visceral/ Anne McCrossan

    Gordon, I’ll bookmark this post on del.icio.us because it’s good… so it’ll come up on my twitter feed and facebook feed and on friendfeed. By digging it too the same thing happens, but the big thing that twitter delivers the best is the ability to create the micro-networks that come from being able to build a following around one’s interests based on affinities. This is a dynamic that’s quite different from just showing up on twitter, something I think that many brands haven’t quite caught onto yet.

  • Gordon Macmillan

    I agree, you’re right about the micro networks. Would love to see a huge Twitter bubble – sure there’s one out there and i just missed it.

  • http://www.linkedIn.com/in/garethwong gareth wong

    Great post Gordon

    am new too all this, I get Twitter more than blogging, I definitely now can go through more ‘news’, and updates, across media, finance, gaming, telecoms, US/Europe/Asia much more than previously..

    twitting is much quicker, as I found blogging hard work as my expectation of a good blog post takes a lot more work..

    However, my comments re potential success for Twitter for mass market adoptions is one of TRUST:

    1.) Identification, @Wossy @WillCarling now we know are real thing, but how do we know @GordonM is you and @GarethWong is me? we have seen too many ‘pretenders’ since I restarted using the system.

    2.) shortened links, we have a great trust at the moment, because it is early adopters, and we ‘trust’ everyone would not put malicious links up (touch wood).. we need some kind of ways via API and the twitter system to make sure the links are NOT malicious going forward..

    3.) tweetups and festivals.. great initiatives.. but once again, they are useful for party goers but seems to me they are same bunch of people mostly.. guess it is just a fad, and may have more ‘focus’ with some ‘camp’ type events, still, I don’t see many senior figures signing up to these in present formats.. no doubt it will be evolved ..

    I am still learning, these are my present observations and keen to learn to see if my observations are correct or maybe I missed something?

    BR

    @GarethWong

  • Gordon Macmillan

    Gareth you raise a really good point about the shortened links and trust. I use these all the time without a second thought, but as the number of people you follow grows up there’s a danger that you haven’t really checked them out. A lot of it as you say is on trust.

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