Twitter closing on Facebook for social traffic

Interesting piece by Alex Kantrowitz for Buzzfeed yesterday. Facebook’s feed changes might be making Twitter more relevant again:

In October 2017, Facebook sent 4.7 visitors to publishers for every one visitor Twitter sent, according to data from SocialFlow, a publishing tool used by approximately 300 major publishers, including the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. Since then, referrals from Facebook declined and those from Twitter rose. This month, Facebook is sending just 2.5 visitors to publisher sites for every one sent by Twitter, essentially cutting the lead in half. SocialFlow’s data spans 10.1 million social posts and 2.8 million clicks.

This is really interesting. Up until now, Twitter has been very much an also-run for traffic for most publishers (good for breaking news and politics, not great for most other things). There’s an opportunity here for both Twitter, to kick-start the user growth that’s stagnated for years, and for publishers to start engaging with readers again in a non-algorithmic environment.

If only Twitter didn’t have that whole Nazi problem…