Report Says Twitter Would Take 36 Years to Catch Facebook - If Facebook Stopped Growing Today
Marketing firm HubSpot will publish a report tomorrow on the state of Twitter at the end of 2008, based on user data the company harvested from its controversial app TwitterGrader. Though the report's methodology is not discussed, the numbers it includes are quite interesting. We draw our own conclusions based on those numbers below.
Days after Facebook posted some incredible new user numbers, it's hard not to use that as the measuring stick. While the media has mentioned Facebook about 4X as many times as it has mentioned of Twitter in the last month - Facebook is not four times the size of Twitter. It is almost 30 times as big and growing much faster.
HubSpot estimates that Twitter has 4 to 5 million users, 30% of which are "brand new or unengaged." They estimate that Twitter sees between five and ten thousand new accounts opened each day. That's a nice number, but it's far below, for example, Facebook's astonishing 600k daily registrations and 140 million active users. Twitter is a fascinating little phenomenon - Facebook is mainstream.
Why is this important for users? Because most of the people you might really enjoy connecting with on Twitter are unlikely to ever use it. They are busy using Facebook instead.
Projecting Current Numbers
If Facebook stopped growing right now and Twitter's numbers were at the upper end of Hubspot's estimates (10k per day) - it would take 36 years for Twitter to catch up. [(135,000,000 more Facebook users / 10,000 new Twitter users per day) / 365 days per year = just about 37 years]
Facebook, on the other hand, grows another Twitter's worth of new users every 8 days. This at a time when everyone from the President Elect to CNN to Shaquille O'Neil to Britney Spears is jumping on board Twitter!
Of course these conclusions require us to believe Facebook's numbers and HubSpot's numbers about Twitter. HubSpot has an economic interest in making Twitter look as big as possible, though, as it's selling marketing services related to Twitter. (Disclosure: this author once did an hour of consulting for Hubspot, as well.)
The logical conclusion here appears to be that Twitter is numerically insignificant.
Other findings from HubSpot's forthcoming report:
- 38% of Twitter users haven't uploaded a photo of themselves to their profile. This is a far cry from Facebook or LinkedIn's "verified identities" and closer to Digg's bizarre world of juvenile freaks with random handles. The Digg model, by the way, is having a really hard time making any money.
- 22% of users have 0 to 5 followers. 9% of users haven't even figured out that the point is to follow people on Twitter - they haven't followed anyone at all.
- There are other numbers in the report that are interesting and not so negative. 20% of Twitter users have joined in the last 60 days, HubSpot says. That means Twitter is, since the end of October, on a pace to double in just under a year.
- Twitter appears to be used primarily for communicating in small groups. 30% of users are following 5 or fewer other people, 78% are following 50 or fewer.
Our take away? We love Twitter, we use it all day long. It's a fascinating little technology that's interesting to watch and use. It's image far outweighs its numbers, though, and there's no reason to believe that's going to change soon.
You can read the full HubSpot report for yourself below.
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The problem that Twitter faces, IMO, is that they have a reputation of being for the tech elite. The average internet user is intimidated by Twitter. My very average friends love Facebook but wont get close to Twitter.
Whether the belief is right or wrong doesn't matter. Perception is everything when it comes to new users.
Posted by: Jmartens | December 22, 2008 5:34 PM
It doesn't seem like the report is taking into account the hockey stick growth that Twitter is just starting to get into.
I predict that within 3 years, Twitter will be just as big as Facebook currently is. Within 5 years, Twitter will be bigger that Facebook.
Posted by: Joel Strellner | December 22, 2008 5:35 PM
I won't make any predictions, I don't have the evidence and although I admire Hubspot for their efforts here, I don't think they have enough evidence to make these claims. Twitter Grader, it could be argued, is only used by more advanced users, and thus leaves out others who are just getting started.
That said, Twitter and Facebook do different things, so it's unfair to compare them. Facebook is a multimedia platform and destination *like Yahoo in the old days*, Twitter is a multi-way conversation and application for on the ground interaction.
A better comparison for Twitter would be to Brightkite.
Posted by: Brandon J. Mendelson | December 22, 2008 5:43 PM
Marshall,
I have to agree with Brandon that they are very, very different tools. Not to mention, a Twitter feed installs to Facebook seamlessly, which makes them cohabitants as opposed to competitors. Look forward to seeing the full doc though.
All my best,
Rich
Posted by: Rich Becker | December 22, 2008 6:13 PM
I am new to Twitter and really enjoy reading what I want to read and have been blown away by the volume of new followers reading about Wind Power off of Twitter
http://www.Wind4me.com
Posted by: wind4me | December 22, 2008 6:35 PM
Although Twitter may indeed gain users on an exponential (like a "hockey stick" model) in the future, I do believe that continued growth is directly related to personal verification, as I've written here at Mashable (http://bit.ly/peopleontwitter). Has everyone forgotten that this is what sets LinkedIn and Facebook apart from MySpace and all the rest? People like to know who they're talking to! If you are new, see the poor user interface, and that 38% of people don't have a picture up, why would you want to keep using the system? It's hard enough "to get" as it is.
Posted by: Mark Drapeau | December 22, 2008 6:36 PM
Not sure how facebook makes money - comparing say the reported results for YouTube revenues (Warner produces commercial content & doesn't seem impressed - see recent articles - user-generated content has yet to see a compelling pay-off even bittorrent & joost are suffering & their models are less tenuous based on "piracy" estimates) ...
Text is a $100 bil business & twitter may have the most to offer in getting some split with high ROI ... OTOH facebook may suffer more from competition from those that do not host data - say friendfeed ... Yahoo is working with att.net, a separate example (relevance? Not clear on their arrangement)
It doesn't seem to matter who is "elite" only who is willing to pay ... People pay a lot for text ... IMHO Seems like a skewed way to interpret the upside for either business.
Posted by: Wes | December 22, 2008 6:49 PM
I don't buy that angle for a minute.
Twitter isn't trying to be Facebook.
And Facebook is, by all means, a giant phenom itself.
But Twitter will be far bigger. Why?
As I've been saying since it was twttr;
"Twitter. It's for EVERYBODY"
{Facebook, is not}
Posted by: Ed | December 22, 2008 6:54 PM
Twitter and Facebook use opposite approaches to social networking with far, far different goals in mind.
THEY AREN'T THE SAME DAMN THING! Email and IM do something very similar, yet do we see either of those technologies dying anytime soon? Of course not.
Twitter is a stand-alone tool and a complement to Facebook.
And hell yeah it's only for the tech elite. Too many idiots in the world as is.
Posted by: Tyler Hurst | December 22, 2008 7:03 PM
Fwiw, I use Twitter and Facebook very similarly - except I use Twitter instead of Facebook. Both are social networks that get discussed a lot these days - I think it's a fair comparison, even if they are different in important ways too.
Who says Twitter needs to catch up?
As others have commented, Facebook and Twitter are complimentary and serve different needs. I don't think Twitter will ever catch up to Facebook.
Facebook excels at keeping people up to speed with their friends. It's a closed loop, and all of the information flow is predicated on established friend connections.
Twitter's strength is in the fact that you can follow anyone, whether they know it or not. Maybe it's a function of the people I friend/follow, but Facebook is more social while Twitter seems more informational. Everyone has a social life. Not everybody wants another source of information.
This is an apples and oranges comparison.
Posted by: Glen Turpin
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December 22, 2008 7:37 PM
Facebook and Twitter are quite different. I see Facebook and FriendFeed as being strong competitors however.
In any case, nice splashy title, but acquisition curves are just that, curved. You're pre-supposing linearity when linearity is almost never the case.
It is an otherwise interesting post. Thanks!
Posted by: KyNam Doan | December 22, 2008 7:45 PM
Facebook is mainstream social networking and Twitter is geeky microblogging..How can you compare them? Its like comparing Wordpress with Google...
Posted by: thunderror | December 22, 2008 8:51 PM
Speaking of trajectory, extrapolation, and pseudoreplication...
Another interesting 36 year arc is Atari. Then there was the case of a couple of crazed gametes that fused 36 years ago and I was the result.
Clearly, in 36 years I have not yet reached a level of cool to displace Atari logos on aging hipster tee shirts.
Such fail is all too common.
Let's hope Twitter gets cranking before it is too late.
Posted by: qthrul
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December 22, 2008 8:53 PM
Pointless post/report. If anything its a strong indicator of either of these two services peeking and that downward trend likely. In 5-10 years the whole scene will be different and both of these services are likely to be the friendsters of our time.
Facebook and Twitter are two totally different things. Why is it in 08 we had plenty o pointless comparison posts, friendfeed vs twitter, pownce vs elvis, readwriteweb vs techcrunch, mahalao vs other startup dying trying hard to find a way to make money before consumers exit stage left and on and on.
Slow news day.
Posted by: dan | December 22, 2008 9:00 PM
Nifty plugin!
Posted by: qthrul
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December 22, 2008 9:19 PM
The question is will FB even be a viable entity going forward or collapse under their own weight? Their burn-rate just to keep up with the bandwidth demands is incredibly high. This is the main impediment for them to scale to the demands of the masses..
Posted by: nemrut | December 22, 2008 10:37 PM
Good analysis but wrong comparison. You are comparing apple (social network tool) with orange (microblogging tool). If you analyze status update in Facebook against the twitter updates then in someway there is a scope to compare but this in no way fair comparison.
Posted by: Dipesh Khakhkhar | December 23, 2008 12:03 AM
Facebook is used by consumers.
Twitter is used by a selective group of people in Information technology or marketing business.
Facebook wants to become a platform for applications.
Twitter has become a platform for applications.
Posted by: LEADSExplorer | December 23, 2008 2:13 AM
I think comparing Facebook to Twitter is just stupid. They are different types of companies trying to get people to use their service for a completely different type of reason.
Posted by: Steven Finch | December 23, 2008 2:32 AM
Yeah, it's a good analysis (as always), it but doesn't mean anything.
Facebook innovated on the social networking concept years after the first proper social networking site. Twitter is innovating on a whole new approach to communications, that even myself as an active twitter user, doesn't really know how it will pan out.
Twitter is doing to communications, what search did to information. Give it - and its competitors which haven't been created yet - some time.
Posted by: Elias Bizannes | December 23, 2008 2:42 AM
what a pathetic stunt this report is. the grader is a rubbish metric. the report is a marketing ploy with voodoo substituted for proper statistics (hey, plotting stuff in excel is not proper analysis, k?). the data is also rubbish (a compete graph?). and finally, an assumption of linear growth instead of accounting for network effects that bring logarithmic growth.
but now, we can paint graphs in pretty orange and publish them and look all awesome.
and in other news, twitter will take a quadrajillion years to catch up with google.
Posted by: henry | December 23, 2008 5:21 AM
Last night on the Fox Report at 7 pm, they explained the story of the Denver Plane Crash and how Mike Wilson used Twitter immediately after the crash. I am sure millions of people who had never heard of Twitter saw that story. I think Twitter's potential growth curve is just fine.
Posted by: Michael Pate | December 23, 2008 6:04 AM
For all of the main stream publicity that Twitter has received in the last year or so, the fact that it only has 4 million users, many of whom are not engaged, speaks very negatively for the service. The fact is, many people just don't find the service to be worthwhile. Maybe, most people prefer to not be this hyperconnected?
Posted by: VeteranWebObserver | December 23, 2008 6:45 AM
Like others said, it doesn't make any sense comparing Twitter and Facebook, as they stand today. I would be much more interested to see what Facebook was doing in their first year of growth. If I remember correctly, some profiles lacked pictures as they didn't know how to use Facebook. I believe Facebook has been around for 5 years so a true comparison should wait until Twitter has been around for 5 years.
With that said, I am on both sites and believe Twitter will make more money than Facebook when all is said.
Posted by: Ari R. | December 23, 2008 7:31 AM
They're two completely different things. I like Twitter better because it's simple, private, and no one on Twitter is engaged in a pissing contest of who has more friends, thus increasing their popularity as if they're some sort of rockstar. Twitter just is.
Posted by: AnthonyIac | December 23, 2008 7:59 AM
You may also want to check out yonkly. It's the first "create your own" microblog to integrate with Twitter: http://yonkly.com
Posted by: scott | December 23, 2008 8:04 AM
How about a post that says that since there are more stars in the sky than buildings, urban planning will never be as important as astronomy. That makes about as much sense from this post, which surprisingly shows little understanding of either things being compared.
Posted by: David Berkowitz | December 23, 2008 8:11 AM
Does the fact that, as with MySpace, Facebook's user-base was/is largely a younger demographic as opposed to Twitter (whose user-base averages age 35 and up, according to one study I read) play into these growth numbers?
Posted by: Paul Chaney
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December 23, 2008 8:18 AM
Jumping on the bandwagon of Dan, Elias, and others, while the HubSpot report provides value, there is little legitimacy comparing Twitter with Facebook due to the reasons one uses each, as you admitted, Marshall.
Many people lead busy lives and they want to visit one site, see their friends' status updates and pictures and vampire bites and little green patches inside of 60 seconds. That is doable with Facebook's feed of status updates, but harder to track with Twitter, relying on external tools.
A better analogy might be to compare this Twitter trend with Friendster.
Posted by: Ari Herzog
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December 23, 2008 8:25 AM
Facebook sucks & it just sucks all your personal information into it for anyone to harvest. It looks like someone puked on the screen any time you go to Facebook. Twitter is useful and focused.
It could use a few enhancements but is a much better overall application than Facebook. Facebook will peak and people will move on within the next 5 years or so.
Posted by: Joel Luxby | December 23, 2008 8:28 AM
I have to agree with what I see as the overwhelming response. A comparison of Facebook and Twitter in a little unfair because how they used, and the reasons for it, are not directly parallel. There are only two features that are parallel and, as pointed out several times above, the two social media tools work pretty well together.
I'm a little turned off by the credibility of this piece based on the response of "Both are social networks that get discussed a lot these days - I think it's a fair comparison, even if they are different in important ways too." Just because they are both lumped into the social media bundle doesn't mean it's an apples to apples comparrison. Based on his response I would love to see his comparrison of Myspace Vs. Flickr, Ning Vs. Vimeo and several others that have very little in common except for being considered a social media tool.
Posted by: Michael Dougherty | December 23, 2008 8:29 AM
Michael Dougherty - you bring up an interesting example. Facebook now says it's the largest photo sharing service on the web - beyond Flickr. Is that a fair comparison? In some ways I think it is. Re Ning and Vimeo, if Vimeo were of any substantial size, or if Ning could say "you know, Vimeo is known as a place where a lot of artists upload their video, but the fact is - more artists upload video to Ning than to Vimeo" - I think that would then be a fair comparison to make. Likewise, both Twitter and Facebook are services we use to see what our friends are doing and to share what we're doing. Both are social networks. I love Twitter - but the fact is that it is tiny compared to *its competitor* Facebook.
I do not see much value in comparing Twitter to Facebook. I doubt Twitter will ever approach that type of market saturation. I doubt LinkedIn will even get there and they are well ahead of Twitter. These are just different services with different audiences.
Also, using the current per day growth to project out 36 years is a little silly. Their growth has hardly been a steady consistent line. We are working with multipliers here, steep inclines, not straight lines.
It would make more sense to compare their growth lines at similar ages of the sites.
Posted by: jak | December 23, 2008 8:55 AM
Wrong title. It should be "Report Claims," not Report Reveals." The whole thing also falls into the "so what?" category for me.
1) Twitter is perfect for feeding updates into the other social media, especially facebook. As others have said, they compliment each other rather than compete.
2) Twitter has obvious and ongoing commercial uses - building followers and twitter specials, discounts, links that help your audience solve their problems.
3) Twitter is easy.
Even if Twitter flames out, someone will take up the mantle and build something similar. The market is now in place thanks to Twitter.
Posted by: Clark Mackey | December 23, 2008 9:00 AM
Wow, Jmartens, wow. Just, um, wow. - "My very average friends love Facebook but wont get close to Twitter."
Posted by: Donaldson | December 23, 2008 9:00 AM
On samepoint.com we count:
206,000,000 Mentions for Facebook
http://www.samepoint.com/?q=facebook
21,000,000 Mentions for Twitter
http://www.samepoint.com/?q=twitter
Ironically, we have had about equal success with both.
Thanks readwriteweb for shedding some light on this! Great post.
Posted by: Darren Culbreath | December 23, 2008 9:10 AM
The fact that this is based on Twitter Grader, a service I have tested out several times getting completely conflicting results each time, pretty much invalidates these findings as far as I am concerned.
In addition the comparison is Apples to Oranges.
Posted by: Loki | December 23, 2008 9:13 AM
Wow. People sure get defensive about Twitter!
To provide some balance though, it's in HubSpot's self interest to post big numbers about Twitter usage, isn't it?
So I think there's more credibility to their core finding--that Twitter ISN'T 'all that'--than whether comparing Twitter to Facebook is a fair comparison.
It is. They are both social networking tools. The essence of the report is that MOST people don't find Twitter to be as useful a social networking tool as Facebook.
Period. End of story. Don't read any more into than it is. Just because you happen to be one of the few that 'get' Twitter, use it and find it useful, doesn't mean the rest of the world does.
Twitter is often flaunted as the next 'killer app'. I tend to agree with the report that it isn't--there just isn't enough value for the average person to take advantage of it.
Let's face it, it's really just a very slow moving IRC chat window. Some folks are addicted to it, some have better things to do with their time.
I'm not saying that Twitter isn't useful in some way--it is.
It's just not for everyone. For MOST people, Facebook represents a way to stay in touch with their friends and people they know offline.
The essence of Twitter is about creating NEW friends, or gleaning bits of wisdom/minutae from total strangers.
Imagine that--more people would prefer to connect with people they already know, than take the effort to connect with people they don't know.
Thanks for the info, Hubspot! I know have additional information on how to best use Twitter.
If you want to reach the 'elite' or 'influencers', use Twitter. When you want to connect with the masses--go to someplace like FB. (although I can, and do argue, that FB is a terrible advertising platform).
It's just information people, no need to defend Twitter so vigorously.
Posted by: mark | December 23, 2008 9:16 AM
This is pointless to compare Twitter to Facebook... why even do it? They are not competitors. I use both. I found out about Twitter from Facebook and now I use Twitter daily and Facebook not so much, but only occasionaly.
Signing up isn't a good measurement...how often do users use the product? Quite a few people I know sign up for Facebook and seldom use it. I never thought of Twitter as being for the techno "elite" and I am what one would call an average user and I LOVE Twitter. It's so much less complicated than Facebook. I find so much more info on Twitter -that's how I came across this article as a matter of fact. I don't know why the need to compare them, they both are useful in their way. The sandbox is big enough for all I say. The more toys the merrier!
Posted by: pam | December 23, 2008 9:17 AM
I can tell you that twitter has the ability to scale quickly for "movements". Sure, I know there are tons of facebook groups but I don't think many people actually go and hang out in those groups. Twitter hashtag movements, although some are short term, do indeed grip large chunks of members when news breaks.
For my own use, twitter is real time, facebook is old news and more of a diary of things that already happened
Posted by: Daltonsbriefs
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December 23, 2008 9:17 AM
I love facebook but am now really liking twitter for all the content.
Posted by: Rick Pannell | December 23, 2008 9:26 AM
I like facebook, but really like twitter for all the good links and content.
Posted by: rickpannell
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December 23, 2008 9:27 AM
I'm going to take what every one is (rightly) saying about Twitter and Facebook being different technologies a little further. Because Facebook and Twitter are different and given Facebook's nature and its being mainstream, sooner or later Facebook is going to fully integrate the same Twitter functions in a way that will render Twitter unnecessary.
Facebook has shown that that's the direction it wants to take given its integration of the status and comment features and its failed attempt to actually buy Twitter recently. Going with Ari Herzog's comparison of Twitter to Friendster, most likely it will be that as a version 1.0 technology, Twitter has too many obstacles to face and as such it will never really mature and become mainstream.
I blogged recently about where I see Facebook going in the near future in relation to Twitter that also connects to this post nicely. The link is http://www.israelinnovation20.com/2008/12/05/having-failed-to-buy-twitter-what-will-facebook-do-next/.
Posted by: Lisa | December 23, 2008 9:31 AM
Looking up at the Michael Dougherty/Marshall Kirkpatrick debate of Facebook vs Flickr for photos, while Facebook may be a repository of more pics, they're not all searchable and they are only tagged by people's names.
With Flickr, Wikimedia, etc, I can search a photo for an armadillo. Facebook photos may have an armadillo, but I'll never know; and if I'm not friends with that person or wasn't tagged in the photo, I'll never see it.
Posted by: Ari Herzog | December 23, 2008 9:46 AM
It's rare I see adoption charts in a straight line, often they are curved.
Therefore, you can't measure Twitter's anticipated meeting point with Facebook as it's likely a growth curve --not a growth line.
Good points though.
I'm seeing reports (not confirmed) that twitter users is 3-6 million --a far cry from Facebook's 140mm (confirmed to me by Zuckerberg last week)
I'm tracking stats here
http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2008/11/19/social-networks-site-usage-visitors-members-page-views-and-engagement-by-the-numbers-in-2008/
Posted by: Jeremiah Owyang | December 23, 2008 9:49 AM
@44 I can't imagine that Facebook isn't trying to address that right now. If Facebook does create a way to easily search photos in its system, it will no doubt also create privacy settings to go along with them that will make it possible or impossible to search anyone's pictures, even non-friends, based on those settings.
Posted by: Lisa | December 23, 2008 10:08 AM
Twitter maybe, what about Friendfeed (which is Twitter on steroid and, imho, its future)?
Posted by: lelapin
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December 23, 2008 10:26 AM
As many readers point out, the Twitter vs. Facebook comparison is an exercise in apples vs. oranges. I would rather see adoption curves of MySpace vs. Facebook and Twitter vs. Wordpress. Although the Twitter vs. Wordpress comparison has its own apples/oranges issues, Twitter is best seen as a very simple form of blogging. That market simply isn't Facebook size (Facebook is for everyone while Twitter appeals to a smaller set of people). Both are great services (I'm not yet sure whether either is a great business, but that's another discussion.)
Posted by: thomasturnbull.myopenid.com
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December 23, 2008 11:15 AM
I also think they are meant to do entirely different things. Facebook is primarily an online tool to connect with those you already know in your "real life" somehow. Twitter allows you to reach the many out there on the web that you may actually have other reasons to connect with. Thats the way I see them mostly used anyway. The better twitter identities and content can be browsed and searched I think the more useful it will become to more people.
Posted by: james | December 23, 2008 1:33 PM
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