Did Twitter Just Pass Digg in Traffic? No Way.
Widely respected web traffic analyst firm Hitwise has just issued a report that we find, frankly, impossible to believe. Hitwise says that last week Twitter saw more web traffic than Digg for the first time.
We've posted the numbers and charts below, along with some thoughts on how this may or may not be possible. You be the judge. We don't believe it though. Why is this important? Because if the leading microblogging service really topped the leading user-voted news site for eyeballs, that would say a lot about emerging new media paradigms.
Hitwise says that last week Twitter was the 84th most visited site in its Computers and Internet category of websites and Digg was the 85th. Digg gets its traffic from Google, Hitwise says, and Twitter mostly from "social networks."
The needle moving event? According to Hitwise the much publicized Twitter coverage of the US Airways plane crash in to the Hudson River last Thursday drove a whole lot of traffic. That can't explain it all though.
There's a bunch of caveats we have to mention here. Specifically, Hitwise notes that much of Twitter's traffic comes from mobile devices that aren't counted. We'd add that much of Digg's traffic probably comes from paranoid and tech-savvy users who evade traffic monitoring software, though much of Hitwise's data comes directly from ISPs and is harder to evade than other monitoring methods might be.
Compete.com puts Digg still far, far ahead of Twitter.
Other reports put Twitter's registered users around 5 million. Digg sees monthly unique visitors probably 5 or 6 times that number, at least. Are a whole lot of people visiting Twitter but not registering for accounts? Given all the mainstream media attention Twitter has been getting this year - maybe it is possible. For what it's worth, here at ReadWriteWeb we get a lot of love on Twitter but see far more traffic from Digg, StumbleUpon and other social networks.
Twitter couldn't see more traffic than Digg already, could it? This looks more like a Hitwise problem than a changing of the online landscape. If Twitter did pass Digg that would be a big deal - but we don't see that happening any time soon. Sorry Hitwise.
Twitter may be tiny but we love it any way. Come join the RWW crew there via this slideshow of our accounts.
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I'm pretty positive the number of "tech-savvy users who evade traffic monitoring software" is negligible, whereas the number of users who use other devices not tracked by Hitwise is probably huge. Large enough that I wouldn't doubt Twitter traffic surpassed Digg a while ago (based off the Hitwise stats).
Nic, you're probably right about the small numbers of traffic monitoring evaders - but no way did Twitter pass Digg "a while ago." Every other bit of statistical evidence we see still points to Digg being way in the lead.
I use twitter.com and I spend more time on there than I ever did when I was a heavy digg user.
I don't buy these figures just yet but I would wager that the api hits that twitter gets is massive and could compare to diggs.
Who has a more revenue? Digg or Twitter?
Yup, this is hard to believe.
But stats on Alexa seem to back up Hitwise's findings. 7 day page views look on a par.
And of course there are serious caveats with Compete's data.
Here the point is not necessarily that Twitter is matching Digg traffic, but that microblogging has hit the mainstream in a big way.
I have argued in my blog that microblogging is much more than a fad or just a technical tool, and that it represents a paradigm shift in how we deal with information and each other.
Can anyone explain to me, how do they have revenue with just plain traffic? I cannot understand it:) I can imagine revenue from adverts, but from traffic. Maybe some links for my personal education or just a simple explanation
I never use digg, but twitter is absolutely brilliant
Thanks
Posted by: romanrusso.myopenid.com
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January 20, 2009 2:53 PM
This is trivial to explain. By monitoring ISPs, Hitwise is actually ignoring that a good chunck of that traffic comes from either API usage or client-apps that use the web-service directly, but they shouldn't be counted as "web traffic".
Compete, since it uses a browser plug-in (mostly) would only count real page-views on Twitter (and Digg) website.
Hitwise is very bad. Their stats are off by a lot and their conclusions are even more sad.
Next we'll use Quantacast to tell that 97% of Twitter users are black.
"Widely respected web traffic analyst firm Hitwise"
I'm sorry but Hitwise is not widely respected when it comes to measuring actual traffic to websites as their methodology isn't that great. Now I'm not endorsing any one other measurement firm but here are the Qyantcast numbers:
http://www.quantcast.com/digg.com
http://www.quantcast.com/twitter.com
Now you will notice that Digg is directly measured using page tagging which gives a far more accurate result in terms of real traffic. I would trust these numbers far more than any other for Digg. Now Twitter is only an estimate but it is a long way short of Digg's.
Challenge to Twitter - Get Quantified and lets see the real traffic.
Disclaimer: I'm ex Nielsen Online but I no longer work for any measurement company.
Twitter will grow bigger than digg for sure. May be Hitwise is thinking about predicting near futures.
Twitter is geting popular day by day .
Twitter just keeps on growing and growing. I am not surprised it has passed digg
It shouldn't be too surprising, in the last month with the security problems at Twitter, the story made the main BBC news over here in the UK.
The coverage that Twitter gets through mainstream channels is certainly something that Digg has never had, the only other sites that do are Youtube and Facebook.
i agree that its no big surprise and also that its very important news.
speaking of which twitter's response time with regards to news press releases is unmatched so its no doubt its heavy hitting these days.
im thinkin hurricane warning feed wud be useful...
carol
http://www.jobstaxi.com
Proof positive that Compete.com is the best source for competitive web analytics. Take a look and tell me the Compete.com numbers don't make 10000x more sense.
What would be interesting is to take twitter's traffic then add in traffic from 3rd party sites like Twitpic, TwitterVision, etc. I know they are different companies/sites but it would be interesting to see the total impact that Twitter has on the web.
Digg is the best social networking site to increase traffic.
Digg is the best social networking site to increase traffic.