Nope, StumbleUpon Is Not Bigger Than Facebook, Sorry StatCounter

If you believe StatCounter (and probably StumbleUpon as well), StumbleUpon drives more traffic to external sites than Facebook.

According to this blog, “StatCounter is measuring the share of traffic sent out from seven major social media outlets …”  Which is fine until you start thinking about it.  Here’s why it’s misleading at best:

• That last data point is for January, 2011.  It’s currently the morning of the 4th.  Best case, they have 3 days of data for January.
• StumbleUpon is likely counting traffic sent via their URL shortening service Su.pr as “StumbleUpon” traffic even when those links are shared on Twitter and Facebook.  (Check it out, blogger/author Tim Ferriss uses Su.pr links on his @tferriss Twitter account.)  Su.pr allows you to tweet an RSS feed, so a lot of bloggers use it.
• Twitter traffic is notoriously hard to track.  Apps like TweetDeck make Twitter traffic appear as direct traffic even when it’s really Twitter referral traffic.

So I don’t buy it.  SU is a great source of traffic, but this comparison isn’t accurate.  Twitter will always be under reported, plus SU is siphoning off traffic referrals from other sources (like Facebook and Twitter), and it’s barely January.  Let’s not jump to conclusions.