So is Facebook’s FarmVille Really More Popular Than Twitter?

Last week Facebook announced how much traffic it received, as well as noting that the farm simulator FarmVille had more visitors than Twitter.

At a recent conference in the UK, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg stated that the applications on the website were mind blowing:

“Applications make up a huge part of Facebook. There are over 90,000 applications on Facebook. 69 million active users are using FarmVille alone, that’s more users than Twitter.”

FarmVille also brings in a higher revenue than Twitter, earning £614,150 ($10,000,00) PER DAY from users buying $20 tractors, and that’s not mentioning other items that can be bought and £307,110 ($500,000) made for charity.

The <3 of EU tech

The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!

Twitter in comparison, although unclear, is rumoured to have approximately 18 million users, with 55 million unique visits per month. Their revenue, in comparison, is a modest £245,516 ($400,000). This amount may soon rise with the introduction of paid-for premium accounts. These figures do not indicate whether third party clients such as Tweetie, TweetDeck or Twitterific have been taken into account.

Although FarmVille and Twitter are very different types of social networking, it comes as a slight surprise that a game where a user has to pay to reap the better benefits of the game outruns a site that’s free. Then again, when placed on a website which attracts 200 billion page views per month, it’s hardly a surprise.

Facebook also noted that its key demographic had shifted recently to the 35+ age group, a demographic also held by Twitter.

Twitter is one of the fastest growing social network websites on the web (Twitter is currently ranking third in the social networking charts, behind MySpace and Facebook), if various reports are to be believed, and the differences between networking on a game like FarmVille and Twitter are vast. The figures should also to be expected, because at present Twitter is still a much smaller website than Facebook, which can sometimes be forgotten amongst the hype and tight-knit community surrounding it.

Be sure to leave your comments below!