Tweets skyrocket but Twitter still in Facebook’s shadow

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More tweets than ever are hitting Twitter. But the social network is still far behind Facebook, the world’s most popular social network.

Back in 2007, an average of just 5,000 tweets were added to Twitter on a daily basis. By 2009, that figure grew to 2.5 million tweets a day. It was impressive growth. But over the last year, thanks in large part to celebrity and media attention, tweets have exploded.

The company reported Monday that the number of tweets added to its site grew by 1,400% in 2009 to an average of 35 million a day. Just two months into 2010, 600 tweets are hitting the site each second, amounting to 50 million tweets a day.

Twitter has officially joined the ranks of Facebook and MySpace as a premier social network. But, as successful as it is, the site still pales in comparison with Facebook.

Last week, Web analytics firm Compete announced that Facebook had become the second-most popular website in the United States behind Google.

According to Compete, Facebook attracted approximately 134 million unique visitors in January. Twitter had 23.5 million unique visitors for the month.

Facebook users update their status 60 million times a day, outpacing Twitter’s 50 million daily tweets.

Another sobering fact for Twitter: More than 5 billion pieces of content, including photo albums, notes, and web links, are added to Facebook each month.

In other words, Twitter has a long way to go if it wants to catch up to Facebook.

-- Don Reisinger
twitter.com/donreisinger