Is Facebook speeding up while Twitter slows?

September 25, 2009 | Kim-Mai Cutler | Comments | |

On the heels of Twitter’s latest fundraising round valuing it at a reported $1 billion, data suggests the site’s growth may be slowing. Twitter.com’s marketshare of visits peaked in June then declined into this month, according to analytics service HitWise.

The deceleration would also come as Facebook’s user growth speeds up — the rival saw 300 million users this month, accumulating 50 million users in two months’ time. After copying Twitter features like the site’s stream of updates and user mentions using the ‘@’ symbol, Facebook’s management said that its competitor was in the “rear-view mirror” last week.

“To focus on a company with 40 million users that is not growing is not a good idea,” said Facebook’s vice president of growth, mobile and international expansion Chamath Palihapitiya.

Ouch.

One caveat: Hitwise’s data only looks at the site Twitter.com, and doesn’t count mobile or application traffic. Since about 80 percent of users do not visit Twitter.com to use the service and either use their phones or other clients, using the Web site URL to gauge the service’s growth is far from perfect.

So Hitwise pointed to search volumes for Twitter as further evidence (below the first chart).

twitter1

twitter2

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About the Author, Kim-Mai Cutler

Kim-Mai was born and raised a stone's throw from Apple headquarters in Cupertino by a devout Hewlett-Packard family. After attending UC Berkeley, Kim-Mai worked for Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires in New York, Los Angeles, London and Buenos Aires. Follow her on Twitter at @kimmaicutler, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

  • Going from gaining 50 million users in 3.5 months to gaining 50 million users in 2 months is impressive. I would be interested to know how MySpace compares.
  • I'd say twitter is losing its popularity as facebook seems to be the rave..albeit a delayed one.
  • do i have to remind you that there are "lies, damned lies, and *then* there are statistics" ;)
  • jd
    I've been calling for a Twitter plateau in 2009. Maybe this is it. With $100m inthe bank they could probably innovate out of any rut. But it cannot be overlooked that Twitter is unsatisfying for both publishers and consumers.
  • Name
    Unsatisfying? Curious what your findings are.
  • lia84
    Check out this cool photo tagging software called Fotobounce! It can help you sort your images using face recognition! It can also download & tag your photos from facebook & flickr! You can get it for free at: www.Fotohotline.com
    http://fotobounce.com/index.php?blog
  • After Oprah there is nothing more popular.
    So Twitter is stuck.
  • How can anyone extrapolate on this when it doesn't take into account mobile or third party apps (which are increasingly the way that most people seem to maximize the Twitter experience)? As former baseball wordsmith Toby Harrah said... "statistics are like a girl in a bikini. They show a lot, but not everything."

    @michaeljoel from @hifivelounge
  • Personally i think they are both gaining at their own pace and eventually will partner up.