In its climb up the social networking ladder, Twitter – the service that many mainstream Internet users still like to equate with inexplicably sharing what you had for lunch – has surpassed former social networking giant Myspace in unique visitors.
The Wall Street Journal reports that new data from comScore puts Twitter in the number three spot for social networks, bumping Myspace out of the top three.
According to the numbers, Twitter.com had nearly 96 million unique visitors last month, up 76% from the same period last year. Myspace dropped 17% to just under 95 million unique visitors, while Facebook easily sat in the lead with 598 million unique visitors, up 54% from last year. The number two spot, in case you were wondering (we certainly were) is occupied by Microsoft’s Windows Live Profile, with 140 million unique visitors.
Twitter recently redesigned Twitter.com, which is still in the process of rolling out to all its users, and emphasized repeatedly during and before the event that it is not a social network. Nearly 80% of Twitter’s users experience the service through Twitter.com and part of the purpose behind the redesign, said Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, was to reflect a change in how people can use the site.
“The usage on mobile really underscores what we think Twitter is for people…a real-time information network,” said Williams. “You don’t have to tweet any more than you have to make a webpage to use the Web.”
Rosabel Tao, a spokeswoman for Myspace, told The Wall Street Journal that “any comparisons between MySpace and other Internet services are irrelevant as MySpace’s mix of offerings is uniquely different and specifically focused on audiences under the age of 35.”
While we are comparing apples to different types of apples here, we’re going to have to say they are all apples, though, and not some oranges. With Twitter’s recent redesign, its feed of status updates looks more and more like Facebook, a look that Myspace also recently adopted. So in the category of websites that provide user-created information based on the friends or connections we make, it looks like Twitter just took the number three spot…even if it isn’t very social.
