Looking at a regular graph of traffic data from Digg and Facebook, it would be easy to assume that Digg is lagging far behind Facebook's staggering growth. However, Compete just produced a very different graph that compares traffic at Digg and Facebook since their respective launches, and according to this data, Digg is actually doing better than Facebook. Facebook is obviously older than Digg, so while it has more traffic now, Digg's growth since its inception has actually been faster than Facebook's.]]>
As you can see from the graphs, Digg and Facebook had very similar growth curves for the first four years of their existence, and according to Compete's historical data, Digg's traffic was actually greater than Facebook's for 33 out of 51 months.
It needs to be said, though, that Facebook's user base has exploded over the last year, while Digg's traffic 'only' grew by about 50% according to Compete. During its fifth year, Facebook's traffic more than doubled from about 28 million visitors to over 73 million.
As Jay Meattle points out in his guest post for Compete, Digg will have to come up with something very special if it wants to continue to match Facebook's growth.
Can Digg Become Mainstream?
In a way, though, comparing Digg to Facebook isn't even necessarily fair, as they provide two completely different services, but in terms of the users they want to reach, both have very similar aspirations. For now, Digg, however, hasn't been able to break into the mainstream (even though Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht made an appearance on Jimmy Fallon last week), while there is a good chance that even your mother is now joining Facebook. If Digg wants to continue its growth, it will have to find a way to attract more mainstream users without alienating its base.
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