Digg overtakes Facebook; Both cross 20 million U.S. Unique Visitors
The first time I wrote about YouTube, it had just crossed 20 million visitors in the U.S. Just 4 days after my post, YouTube was scooped up by Google for $1.65B in Google stock. At today's stock price, the deal is worth over $2B.
Context & Ripple Effects
A year after Hitwise's Digg-versus-New York Times reality check punctured inflated traffic claims for the social news site, Compete now puts Digg ahead of Facebook itself, with Read/WriteWeb reporting 1400% year-over-year growth to 22.6 million uniques the same day. Both sites have crossed the exact 20 million U.S. visitor mark that YouTube sat at when Google paid $1.65B in stock for it — a deal the Compete blogger notes is already worth over $2B at the June 2007 share price.
The comparison is doing real work here: the author is explicitly framing 20 million U.S. uniques as the traffic level at which acquirers move, and syndicated pickup from Read/WriteWeb shows the Digg-overtakes-Facebook angle travelling on its own. Whether Digg attracts a buyer the way YouTube did becomes the open question of the moment.
First-order effects
- Digg now claims more monthly U.S. unique visitors than Facebook per Compete, flipping the perceived hierarchy between the two sites as of mid-2007.
- Both Digg and Facebook sit in the same reach tier YouTube occupied immediately before Google's stock deal, making each an immediate subject of acquisition arithmetic.
Second-order effects
- Facebook faces pressure to convert its smaller-but-closer audience into growth faster than Digg, since its college-origin network model is now being out-drawn by an open submission site.
- Advertisers and media buyers get competing third-party numbers (Compete here, Hitwise a year earlier) whose methodology gaps directly shape how social news inventory gets priced.
Third-order effects
- If 20 million U.S. uniques keeps functioning as the trigger point for nine-figure acquisitions of consumer web properties, independent traffic measurers like Compete and Hitwise gain structural power over startup valuations.
- User-generated platforms scaling to mainstream reach within months rather than years points toward consolidation, where scale traffic ends up owned by search and portal incumbents such as Google.
The trend: Social web properties are reaching mass-market U.S. audiences fast enough that raw traffic milestones are becoming the currency of acquisition speculation.