According to recent Compete data, digg has overtaken Facebook in number of unique visitors and has grown 1400% in one year. Compete’s May 2007 data states that digg had 22.6 Million unique visitors, while Facebook had 20.2 Million. Facebook still has many more page views, 11 Billion to digg’s 250 Million – which says that Facebook’s site is far ‘stickier’. But the unique visitors stat is significant, as it suggests that more people visit digg than Facebook.
Source: Compete
If we compare this data though to official registered user stats from digg and Facebook, the story is very different. When Facebook announced their platform, it was revealed that they have 24 million “active” users. The most recent digg stats I could find were from a Kevin Rose blog post on 7 March 2007, in which he announced that Digg had just reached one million registered users. So while the Facebook data seems to correlate with Compete (approximately 1 unique visitor for each registered user), digg’s data is much different. If Compete’s data is accurate, then that means there are 22 unique visitors to each registered digg user. Which suggests that by far the majority of digg’s users are not registered users.
Also, if you look at the growth patterns according to Compete’s data, it is quite extraordinary:
Source: Compete
I find it all hard to believe – not only that digg has 22 Million monthly unique visitors, but also that they have more monthly unique visitors than Facebook. digg is still a very techie user base, whereas Facebook is seemingly far more mainstream. Or is it?
The above graph says that digg grew 1400% in unique visitors over the past year. That is hard data – and if we accept it is true, then the conclusion is that digg has succeeded in going mainstream. Remember that was digg’s stated aim when it expanded beyond Technology stories in June 2006. Yes, one year ago. So has digg actually grown by 1400% in a year, since it expanded its content focus beyond tech? The Compete data suggests it has.
What do you make of this data? Is digg really more popular than Facebook?
