Twitter vs. Facebook – The Battle for Media Coverage

If the Internet were high school, Google would probably be valedictorian, and Facebook and Twitter would easily be Prom King and Queen, but which site is the most popular when it comes to gossip around the halls? The social network on everyone’s lips in 2011 was… TWITTER!

According to data from Highbeam Research, twitter received more media coverage than any other social network, earning a solid 50% of all press reporting, slightly edging out a second-place Facebook. Twitter was the most talked about, most mentioned social network when it came to news and media on a month-to-month basis, 10 months out of the year. Facebook led for only 2 months. The most popular kids in social media high school beat out their competition by a long shot all year. Other networks barely made the ballot.

The breakdown of media popularity broke down like this:

Twitter (50%), Facebook (45%), LinkedIn (3.33%), MySpace (1.3%) and FourSquare (0.71%). Google+ was left out in the media cold.

You may be asking “how does this happen? Facebook is absolutely HUGE! Facebook has milions and millions more users than Twitter! Facebook should have won!”

While the user difference is quite large, true, Twitter is the ‘mainstream media darling’. The interactions with actual celebrities, news reporters, the implimentation of Twitter in revolutions when reporters weren’t allowed in, and for breaking news, has made the social network a trusted and respected way of spreading information in real-time.

With Facebook already adapting Twitter-like features, including the “subscribe” feature and the “ticker”, we might see the gap widening in the next year. How much media coverage will Twitter have next year? #ProbablyMoreThan50Percent

Source: Media Bistro