Comparing Twitter, Facebook, and Google Buzz Traffic

On Feb. 22, Twitter gave users (and non-users) a report of how much activity has been going on through the service. Since its inception in Jan. 2007, the number of Tweets each day has now grown to the insane amount of almost 50 million. That’s an average of almost 600 per second.
Let’s compare that to Facebook, the most popular form of social networking at the moment, and the newbie, Google Buzz.
Facebook users have Twitter beat, updating their profiles more than 60 million times a day or at a rate of around 700 per second, according to its statistics page.

Google reported early on after it launched Buzz that the service was averaging 55 posts per second.

The way that these services compile these numbers further skews the actual activity taking place, however.

For instance, each post in Twitter is considered a tweet no matter whether if it is an original message, a retweet, a comment, or a link being shared. That means that one original tweet can be counted numerous times depending on the response to it.

The Facebook stats only show updates to profiles. All of the other popular activities that take place on Facebook aren’t even counted! That includes comments on other user’s updates or “likes” of a status update. These numbers also don’t necessarily include posting pictures, adding links, notes, or pages, or joining groups. For instance, you can opt to join an online community, but opt to not have it shown as a status update.

As far as Google, the figures were released only two days after Buzz launched. They could have grown exponentially since then, or slowed down after a huge curious response to the initial launch.

The way that activities are monitored is different in each instance, but if all activity in Facebook was presented in actual figures, it would seem that it still is significantly ahead of Twitter as far as user activity.

To make it more equitable for Google Buzz, we’ll have to wait a couple of years to make a viable comparison.