Twitter remains niche while Facebook continues mainstream growth

Twitter and Facebook are probably the two most talked about sites around the blogosphere right now, with both positive and negative news snippets about the two being posted everyday. But while they are both brilliant services, there is one huge difference between the two: visitor numbers.

I personally use both Twitter and Facebook but I must admit to losing interest in Twitter on a weekly basis and not signing in for days at a time. Maybe I’m missing something but there just seems to be something lacking with the site. I use Facebook more regularly but even that has lost some of its appeal since the layout changes hid most of what was good.

HubSpot has published a report titled The State Of The Twittersphere (pdf link), which uses the marketing firm’s controversial TwitterGrader app to compile stats galore about where Twitter is and where it’s headed. While it’s doing okay, the number of people using it suggest the service is still stuck in the realms of being a niche.

There are an estimated four to five million users on Twitter, 30 percent of which are new. HubSpot claims between five and ten thousand new accounts are started every day. Which may seem impressive until compared to the recently published Facebook numbers of 140 million active users and up to 600,000 new registrations ever day.

Other interesting findings from the report include:

• 35 percent of users have 10 or fewer followers with 9 percent following no-one.
• 38 percent of Twitter users haven’t bothered to upload a photo to their profile.
• London is the top location for Twitter users, at least of those who have entered the information.

So what does this all mean for Twitter, a service regarded in high esteem by some high profile bloggers and often cited as being the shape of journalism to come?

In terms of sheer numbers, Facebook is a much more important service than Twitter is ever likely to be. But of course, quantity isn’t everything, with the quality of people on Twitter maybe making up for the huge numbers being achieved by the social networking site.

What is clear however, at least for now, is that Twitter remains a niche enjoyed by the relatively small number of people using it but failing to break out into the mainstream. This could change but Twitter has had a lot of press coverage during 2008 and still failed to really take off in any big way. The signs for global domination aren’t good.

• Twitter turns three and celebrates by going mainstream
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• Teens don’t use Twitter because Facebook still rules
• Facebook copies Twitter – If you can’t buy it, cheat