Does Facebook Really Have Twitter Envy?

If you use Facebook then you have heard all the grumbling over the new Facebook layout. It seems that over 90% of users hate it, and there are rumors that Mark Zuckerberg thinks that user feedback is irrelevant. So why the change?

Facebook's new layout looks somehow familiar to Twitter users. It is now arranged to look more like a news feed. The common consensus? Facebook is trying to copy Twitter.

But how ridiculous is that? Sure, if you didn't know any better you might think that Twitter was a serious competitor to Facebook. Twitter certainly has been in the news a lot lately. It seems that every news story surrounding President Obama's speech to the joint session of Congress mentioned how our representatives were using Twitter.

But that, too, is ridiculous. If this is the source for Facebook's wildly unpopular redesign, they need to stop and take a look at some numbers before making 90% of their users unhappy. Facebook, take note:

Yes, Twitter is growing, and it is growing rapidly. Over the last three months, Twitter has grown their user base significantly, more than doubling the number of daily visitors. But look closer. Twitter is still just a blip on the horizon compared to Facebook, and a tiny one at that. It still only has 2% as many Daily Visitors as Facebook.

But don't stop there. In terms of growth, Facebook has continued to grow at an incredible rate. In whole numbers, over the period where Twitter doubled its user base, Facebook wasn't sitting still. It grew its daily visitors 32%. That's quite a feat for a site that already has 50X as many daily visitors as Twitter. It means that Facebook's increase in total daily visitors was 20X more than Twitter.

My advice to Facebook: Twitter isn't serious competition yet. Just look at the numbers.