Twitter leaves Digg in the Dust
January 21, 2009 by Colleen Coplick
Filed under Social Media
Maybe it was Obama’s inauguration. Maybe it was the Hudson River "landing" that did it. Whatever the event, something catapulted Twitter even higher into the mainstream. For the first time last week, the market share of traffic to Twitter beat out Digg, according to Hitwise. [source]
Hitwise also says that Twitter’s rise to power is due to increased traffic to the site from 25-35 year olds. This demographic is now making up 45% of Twitter traffic, vs a meager 12% from a year ago. Digg depends primarily on traffic from Google, but Twitter gets a larger share of traffic from social networks, primarily because of the networks that already feature the service.
Another metric to note – the Hitwise data doesn’t include any Twitter activity on cell phones and other mobile devices, which means that the impact of Twitter is higher, and more wider spread than just web visits. That also means that Hitwise also isn’t counting API requests, so for anyone using Twhirl, Tweetdeck or any other one of a myriad other desktop applications.
Digg on the other hand, brags about doubling the site’s audience to more than 35 million in 2008, but according to Quantcast, Digg’s traffic is only 11.7 million in the US and 23.7 worldwide. Maybe that’s why Rose is agreeing with the claim that Digg is worth more than $60 million, hey?
Tags: Twitter, Digg, traffic, Digg valuation, Twitter traffic, Hitwise
