Twitter website traffic has overtaken both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal for April 2009, as picked up by PaidContent and expanded on by ReadWriteWeb.

Which is a handy stat, but….

Are we really comparing like for like, or is this as misleading as comparing print and online figures?

For starters, we’re looking at website traffic, and although publication has numerous ways to be accessed online, I’d risk assuming that Twitter’s proportion of mobile and desktop client access is greater than that of the newspaper sites – which probably means the numbers went past the paper sites long ago.

And where’s the measures of interaction for comparison? While not every Twitter user is interacting, and newspaper sites are building in increasing routes to conversations and communities, surely it’s the engagement, interaction and effectiveness of Twitter versus other sites which is of as much importance? Even when it’s breaking news, e.g. Mumbai, the ability to converse with both the source and others is built into Twitter to a far greater extent than the paper sites.

Finally for a comparison – what amount of data is being generated by the different sites?

That’s surely of major importance considering the changes happening in general searching:

First hands on test with Wolfram Alpha

Google search tools moving closer to ‘real-time’

And considering the current wave of new and improved Twitter search tools:

Scoopler

Twitscoop

Tweetmeme

Oh, and major changes to Twitter Search itself.

Whether or not the current buzz and celebrity/mainstream adoption continues, or whether a backlash increases along with the pretty high drop-out rate from people trying Twitter for the first time, it’s the levels of data and engagement which are key to the longterm success, and routes to monetization for Twitter, rather than sheer mass audience numbers. Particularly when the types of both advertiser and advertising which are going to be most effective will also be quite different from traditional publishing outlets.