This week, Mashable posted the article, “Who Won the World Cup: Facebook or Twitter?” concluding that though both social networks have “impressive-sounding stats,” that “it would seem that Facebook was the clear winner.” Keyword: “sounding.”

Is it really all that impressive? Of course to some degree, but isn’t it more about the appearance than the actual value? When a brand reaches the billions in impressions and social interactions, chatter naturally increases creating buzz around the brand.

With companies camping out in war rooms during live events seeking their own Oreo moment, it’s no question that social media has become not just a vital aspect of marketing, but the main attraction. While there is without a doubt a heavy emphasis on the quality of campaigns and this idea of pushing out original timely content with the hopes of going viral, at the very same time, quantity has become just as important.

It’s become a battle of the impressions. Who had the most? Which social network ruled which event? Is billion in that number or is just a puny million? Having the analytics present definitely offers validation that a campaign performed well, but there are endless factors that could be considered, and in the end, it’s unclear how best to decipher a clear winner, or if there is one at all.

Facebook had 3 billion interactions (likes, comments, posts) from 350 million users throughout the entire World Cup while Twitter had 672 million tweets. Mashable notes “that’s not exactly comparable to interactions” and that’s completely right. A tweet can be best compared to a status update on Facebook as it’s original user-generated content created by users not an action, however Facebook’s numbers are not based on status updates, but on actions. It’s also noted that Facebook’s user base is about five times the size of Twitter so that outcome is pretty much guaranteed.

While both numbers are significant and at the end of the day, both benefited greatly from this sporting event, Twitter is better known for high activity during live events than Facebook. Facebook and Twitter cannot be compared. Users and brands use the outlets for separate initiatives usually creating different strategic approaches for each platform.

JCPenney builds their social strategy on Twitter, as seen during this year’s Super Bowl. “The organic in-the-moment conversation around the World Cup really lives on Twitter,” Sean Ryan, social and mobile director for the conglomerate told Mashable. Twitter has become the venue to access live coverage during sporting events, season finales, concerts and breaking news. To many social media users, Facebook is portrayed as being more formal and less in-the-moment.

Towards the end of the article, Mashable’s initial conclusion takes a wishy washy turn:

“As it stands, neither Facebook nor Twitter may get exactly what they want from the World Cup, but both enjoyed a nice boost in activity from users and brands and neither suffered a major outage or other bad press. So perhaps we should just declare it a win for both.”

Social analytics are imperative for a number of reasons, but are they being exhausted? Does seeing such high numbers so regularly eliminate the significance of the numbers? Social media marketing may still be too young to actually decide what’s significant and what’s not, and maybe that’s why the analysis surrounding social campaigns is still a work in progress.