DISQUS

echochamber · 10 months ago

I think the answer lies in your generous definition of "press coverage."

Eric Eldon · 10 months ago

You mean Google's definition of "press coverage," I assume?

Borings, ID · 10 months ago

If yer havin a xplainin it, not worth doin it.


(besides, for once you have more than 100 people who follow you, only 3/100 will see your new message.)

Jack · 10 months ago

Pretty simple possible explanation: Facebook users largely go to the actual site, which is why a web-based traffic view is appropriate. Twitter users use Twitter on their phones, using other apps, and in other channels, which is why measurements of people using Twitter based on them visits to twitter.com probably aren't as accurate.

That and Facebook is still a ton larger than Twitter.

Eric Eldon · 10 months ago

Jack, I'd briefly touched on the API usage variable -- certainly makes the picture less clear. But Facebook has Connect now, which also muddies these waters. And then there's the search volume.

Facebook User · 10 months ago

While there's no released data I'm aware of, the much more important metric is 'active users'. Of those monthly uniques to Facebook, I'd bet literally tens of millions of those people are active users, i.e. they check in several times a week, if not more.

The common sense test immediately tells you Facebook active users vs. Twitter. I'd bet nearly anyone in their teens or 20's, many people in their 30's, and even a good number of 40+ know Facebook, and are likely to be using it.

Twitter on the other hand...I'm surprised how many seemingly tech-savvy young people are completely clueless and sometimes don't even recognize the name. And I live and work in San Francisco, with my last two trips being Tokyo and NYC. These aren't backwater folks I'm talking about.

And the press' love affair with Twitter is clear and open...a little tail wagging the dog perhaps?

PKafka · 10 months ago

Easiest answer: Because while it's incredibly easy to cover Facebook (see "OMG people are using this 25 things thing on Facebook!), it's even easier to cover Twitter ("Twitter! 140 characters! No revenue! etc).
There's a separate answer that has to do with online publications and page views and feedback loops, but we'll save that for another day.

MG Siegler · 10 months ago

And it's even easier to cover coverage of said items.

Eric Eldon · 10 months ago

#toometa

MG Siegler · 10 months ago

Why are you cheating on #tooinsidery with #toometa? #tooinsidery

PKafka · 10 months ago

Next up: why do people write about apple so much?

Eric Eldon · 10 months ago

I was going to say Kindle, but yeah.

PKafka · 10 months ago

Yeah!

MG Siegler · 10 months ago

It used to be because Twitter was too unreliable to write about all the time (unless you were writing about that of course), but these days I think it has to do with FriendFeed slowing the pace at which it releases small, new features.

Kai · 10 months ago

If you are a twitter user, just ask yourself: do you actually go to twitter.com to do anything?

Most likely, you use one of Twitter-api powered tools to interact with Twitter instead of actually going to Twitter.com.

Chris R · 10 months ago

Good insight!

Mikkel deMib Svendsen · 10 months ago

Searches for a website name and traffic to that websites services has NOTHING to do with each other.

As an example take a look at Yahoo vs Google on Google trends
http://google.com/trends?q=google%2Cyahoo

So, is Yahoo bigger than Google too?

Also, even though both Facebook and Twitter have external tools I am pretty sure a lot more of Twitter users are using them than facebook users.

I am not saying Twitter is bigger than Facebook - they are not. I just hate it when invalid data is used to argue

Eric Eldon · 10 months ago

Although search and web traffic are two different metrics, they do have SOMETHING to do with each other. Which is why I noted the Compete numbers, above. In terms of traffic, Yahoo and Google are about neck and neck (similar to their search results), according to comScore:

http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press...

I don't have all the data at my disposal, of course, but at least I have data.