Commentary

Stumbling Upon Social Media Stats

by Kendall Allen , January 10, 2011

Industry circles have been frothing and preoccupied for the past week or so with this bit: Web discovery service StumbleUpon has just overtaken Facebook as the No. 1 source for social media traffic in the United States. According to Statcounter, the popular platform accounted for about 43% of the U.S. social media traffic in early January, casting Facebook only slightly in its shadow at 38%. Facebook watchers among us got loopy over this stat. But, why? StumbleUpon and Facebook are barely kindred platforms within the social media scope.

As ever, commentators on the ad economy are prone to grab and recite stats, not always providing full context - something that is again missing here. As an industry, we muse on stats and trends, often fairly sloppy on definitions as we banter about the landscape. It's important to differentiate terminology and relevance. Otherwise, we're just contriving threads of perspective that don't advance our collective marketing intelligence.

Understanding residential traffic flow through "social media sites" is only so important when it comes to understanding the significance of these properties. These cold stats have to do with the assignment of currency within our mix and the monetization of assets, real estate, where consumers are spending time. Then, as companion data, we might also be well served to understand where spending is happening within the business, by consulting periodic revenue allocation reports such as those provided by Jack Myers or even the IAB. But to imply that these kind of traffic figures portend much at all is a fairly shallow look.

The social marketing scope encompasses a lot of behavior: self-identification; brand advocacy; congregation; community building; conversing; sharing; recommending; liking; microblogging and more. Traffic across a specific service-driven platform or utility is different in orientation and motivation than traffic through a robust social destination like Facebook. Let's not confuse ourselves or the up-and-coming marketers and media planners among us.

Yes, Statcounter tracks 15 billion page views on the Web per month on more than three million Web sites. Among social media sites, it tracks all the top guys: StumbleUpon, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, Myspace and Digg. So the information the company provides matters, one way or another. But, as we get enthralled with stats and trends, I believe we should remember that context and solid definitions are key to reasonably knowing what you are doing when it comes to savvy channel planning, leveraging platforms, devising the mix and keeping abreast of and involved with the consumer. And, when it comes to the social media mind, the ethos in which we consume and market -- it seems that understanding the companionship of related but not equal entities like Facebook and Stumbleupon, from a behavioral standpoint, is much more useful than understanding the competition between them.

commentary, metrics, social media

12 comments about "Stumbling Upon Social Media Stats".

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Joshua Chasin from KnotSimpler, January 10, 2011 at 11:41 a.m.
I think too much has been made of this Statcounter finding in the past week. Perhaps some of the business press misconstrued the finding.
The point of StumbleUpon is to send people to content. The construct of Facebook is to keep people onsite. This isn't a stat saying StumbleUpon has more traffic than Facebook (it doesn't); it is a stat saying that StumbleUpon is referring more Page Views than Facebook is to third party sites. Which makes sense since that's what StumbleUpon is for.
In terms of actual onsite traffic, based on Media Metrix for November '10, Facebook had about 80 times as many US Unique Visitors as StumbleUpon; and, about 350 times as many Page Views.
Reply

John Jainschigg from World2Worlds, Inc., January 10, 2011 at 12:02 p.m.

This makes very good sense, but it ignores the 'rule of eyeballs,' firmly established during the era when online was destroying the magazine industry. Simply put, in the absence of verifiable data on revenue-per-click, the biggest eyeball number wins, and traffic, and then investment, move to follow that number. Facebook is now doomed -- it's the era of personal recommendation, and StumbleUpon is king (note: someone should tell Digg they're the new Yahoo). I mean, who needs context when you can just look at the numbers (per Joshua) and see that "With 350 times as many pageviews, Facebook produces fewer hits on third-party content than StumbleUpon?" Seems like a no-brainer. (grin)

Steve Montalto from Mountain Design & Development, January 10, 2011 at 12:22 p.m.

Lack of context renders numbers useless, at best, and content potentially just noise.

Yvonne Divita from BlogPaws, January 10, 2011 at 12:25 p.m.

Wow, John... you mean ANY eyeball is worth my investment? Sort of like...when brands pay for TV because the show has Xnumber of viewers but a good many might be the dog - I should still invest? Seriously. All eyeballs are not equal. Facebook delivers key eyeballs. Stumbleupon (which I seldom use - I favor being in contact with my community - my tribe, if you will) may direct me to specific content but it's too broad to make a difference. Facebook actually knows me and keeps me connected to the right people.

Twitter, also, has convinced me that I can get the content I need - without having to review dozens of links. IMHO Joshua has it right.

Paula Lynn from Who Else Unlimited, January 10, 2011 at 1:12 p.m.

Oy vey.

Mike Patterson from WIP, Inc., January 10, 2011 at 1:18 p.m.

All of this being said and EVEN given these page view stats, it's mind-boggling to me that Yahoo is not making more use of delicious...and even considering killing it!

John Jainschigg from World2Worlds, Inc., January 10, 2011 at 2:16 p.m.

No, no - I was just joking. I believe in context underlying value. In fact, I believe in the whole classic value architecture: where media, driven by editorial intelligence, creates content/design/atmosphere that users value and believe in, and social opportunity for them to connect with one another in profitable dialogue and mutual exchanges of value, amplifying the appeal to audience of brands that put themselves deliberately and authentically in association with the media property and its community (or communities), and join that dialogue (or dialogues).

What I'm pointing out is that -- while you and I may believe this -- the Internet doesn't. What the Internet believes, at a systemic level, is that okay, some media may have the magic, and it might be nice to find them, but not necessarily pay a premium (and then actually work) to engage their audiences. Instead, the Internet tends to promote technologies that commoditize and simplify and let folks insert advertising shims into critical process points (search ads), and air-drop ads into media contexts selected by behavioral targeting -- all the while seeking, wherever possible, to make compensation relate more and more directly to tangible ROI. And all these forces conspire, regardless of what people choose to do online, to make all eyeballs of equal, and very small value. Or at the very least, to make their value no longer depend on any classic notion of context, where 'the media with which a user chooses to engage' is always a proxy for a fully-adequate view of the user themselves, in their current/momentary state.

Lunar Le, January 10, 2011 at 3:19 p.m.

With $2 billion spent last year on Facebook ads and more speculated for 2011, would this information cause panic amongst marketers to rethink their social media plans?
I think it is a further look into the consumer behavior and what they crave. This statistic simply proves to me that the demand for relevant content is growing.

http://kikin.com/blog/personalized-recommendations-shaking-up-social-media-smaller-stumbleupon-be

Howie Goldfarb from Blue Star Strategic Marketing, January 11, 2011 at 10:23 a.m.

There is a super inherent bias in the businesses that need positive spin in Social to create that. Mashable. Facebook. Social Media Guru's spout disingenuous half truths and lies all the time.

But the real data can be found. Often put out by the same sources in innocent ways that then damn them in the long run. Sadly not enough Finance folks like me are in Advertising.

In April 2010 Facebook had as one of their stats 55mins spent per user per day based on 400mil accounts. They also showed 3bil photos uploaded per month. Which equals 7.5 photos per user per month.

Now the stats say 700bil minutes spent per month. WOW! That is huge! But in reality based on the 540mil accounts being thrown around its only 43mins per user per day a whopping 22% drop. For photos they now like to say 100mil uploaded per day! But guess what? That is 3bil per month and based on 540m users each only uploads 5.5 photos per month a 26% drop. If the new 600mil users is true these numbers are catastrophic. You are looking at 25-30% drops in network use since April. And with flat growth in the US since July of only 3% this is MASSIVE! Its Damning and Damaging to their ridiculous $50bil valuation (can you say Pump and Dump Class).

Interesting about Stumble Upon. I hate that real data is never given and we are forced to dig for reality. But then if the reality was so incredible it would be presented for all of us to see.

Jeff Rutherford from Jeff Rutherford Media Relations, LLC, January 11, 2011 at 9:48 p.m.

I'm surprised that no one has pointed out something else re: this StumbleUpon stat.

Yes, StumbleUpon can drive HUGE loads of traffic, but the quality of that traffic is terrible. The bounce rate is astronomically high, and the time spent on the site is extremely low.

StumbleUpon can drive traffic, but it's very, very low quality traffic.

Larry Bodine from Larry Bodine Marketing, January 17, 2011 at 10:46 a.m.

Check the chart again. Facebook is still #1
http://bit.ly/flFAPk
You got the date parameters wrong.

Manjunath D s from Abhaya Media, January 19, 2011 at 1:34 a.m.

One cannot predict the traffic from SU for sure. Many factors count in getting quality traffic from it. Time of the day, topic, and user demographics determines the site hits. Nonetheless, SU provides considerable amount of traffic over a period.