• January 21, 2009

The market share of traffic to Twitter surpassed that of social news site Digg last week for the first time, according to Hitwise. The micro-blogging service got a big bounce from the US Airways plane crash in the Hudson river, sparking a surge of posts and updates on the situation.

Twitter also got a boost Tuesday as well from Barack Obama's inauguration, with hourly tweets about the event up more than 300%, according to online measurement service Trendrr.

Another reason for Twitter's ascendance is increased traffic from Internet users ages 25 to 34. That group now accounts for 45% of Twitter traffic compared to 12% a year ago, said Hitwise. And while Digg relies heavily on traffic from Google (38.8%), Twitter receives a higher share of visitors from social networks, mostly due to applications that feature the service.

Hitwise also noted that its data doesn't include Twitter activity on mobile devices, "so the impact of Twitter is actually higher than solely Web visits."

Digg founder and CEO Kevin Rose earlier this month touted the doubling of the site's audience to 35 million in 2008. Quantcast estimates Digg's monthly traffic lower, at 11.7 million in the U.S. and 23.7 million worldwide.--Mark Walsh