Sorry 49ers fans, not only did you have to lose, but you had to be cast into the shadows for half an hour during the Super Bowl while it happened. Now that the game of the year is officially over, it’s time to tackle the second-best battle – of course, we’re talking about Twitter vs. Facebook. Which reigned supreme when it came to these two popular social media networks during last night’s game?

Let’s take a look at these rivaling sites’ stats to get a better idea of which social site boasts more staying power. While Twitter touts a cool 500 million registered users as of last year, Facebook secured more than one billion active users as of September 2012. While each pretty much does the same thing – share things and interact with people – comparing the two is like comparing elephants to ants. This is not to say one is better or greater than the other, but that there is a significantly large difference in the way each looks and operates.

When it came to the top events of 2012, such as the night of the Presidential election, both Twitter and Facebook saw record-breaking volumes of talk and traffic, but they were represented in drastically different ways. Venture Beat condenses these stats into charts for us, where Twitter won when it came to “spreading the word.” Twitter retweets reached 700,000 that night, while Facebook shares floundered at almost 470,000.

Meanwhile, when it came to Facebook’s signature “Like,” there were more than 3,500,000, while Twitter’s equivalent of “Favoriting” tweets peaked at a pathetic 245,238.

As you can see, this goes to show that each site properly reflects our behavior and the way we prefer to share news. Nevertheless, it appears Twitter blew Facebook out of the water when it came to covering last night’s 2013 Super Bowl.

Twitter was featured in more than half (26 out of 52) nationally aired advertisements throughout the game, while Facebook was only featured in four. Compare this to last year, where each was mentioned eight times during the 59 ads seen, and you’ll see that Twitter clearly beat Facebook in an advertising landslide.

Business Insider cites one piece of research that also names Twitter the “fastest-growing social network in the world.” What seems to give Twitter such an advantage over Facebook is the fact that Facebook didn’t move at an applicable pace. The New York Times last year compared it to the child’s story, “The Tortoise and the Hare,” in that Facebook ran so quickly that it exploded and received critical backlash in return – namely, with its security aspects. Meanwhile, Twitter stood its ground and has not taken every possible opportunity to change and expand, not knowing if it would serve as a detriment or not.

Another reason Twitter beats out Facebook for this event – and in general – is that it is far from stopping its exponential growth. It seems Facebook rapidly reached its peak and then slowly started backsliding. Now there’s FarmVille, Facebook chat and timelines; meanwhile, Twitter has virtually remained the same with the exception of a few minute changes, which were mostly visual-related.

This led the latter site to grow 40 percent in the second half of 2012 alone, Business Insider reports. If the site stays on this path, it will reach its valuation of $9 billion, meaning it will outgrow both Facebook and Google+.