Facebook Attracting More Visitors Than Google.com 173
vikingpower writes "Internet research firm Hitwise just broke the news: last week, Facebook attracted 7.07 percent of the internet traffic in the USA, compared to 7.03 percent for Google. This is the first time google.com has been out of the top spot since it surpassed MySpace in 2007, and reflects a change in the way people use internet. They tend to privilege social interaction sites above 'passive' search engines."
Facebook still has a ways to go if you include Google's non-search properties, which bring the total up to 11.03% of traffic.
WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)
What the hell is a "passive" search engine?
Come on, CNN. These people aren't saying "Oh, well, I have Facebook, so fuck Google"...they are just going to Facebook. What with Saint Patrick's day upon us and Spring Break happening in the near future, this doesn't surprise me, as a ton of people are likely using Facebook to organize parties and trips.
OK (Score:4, Insightful)
Facebook still has a ways to go if you include Google's non-search properties, which bring the total up to 11.03% of traffic.
So, in other words, the entire premise of the headline/summary/article is a lie? What would the statistics for Facebook be if you only included "search properties"?
Re:WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)
Come on, CNN. These people aren't saying "Oh, well, I have Facebook, so fuck Google"...they are just going to Facebook.
Not only are they going to Facebook, they're also Googling "facebook login."
The Stripmall Effect (Score:5, Insightful)
Facebook is slowly turning into the WalMart equivalent for the internet. Sure, you could go to flickr for the photos, twitter for the updates, upcoming for the events, youtube/hulu for videos, gtalk/yahoo for IM, gmail to send messages - or you could go to facebook and have all of it half-assed.
Basically a huge walled garden which is only available to those inside the wall. The trick of course, is to make it nice so that people can bring in their data easily and fb's success is because they make it damn convenient to put your data in there.
Now, do I use facebook? Damn right, I do ... because as much bitching as I do about the effect it's having on the entire internet, I gotta move with my friends or end up falling out of touch [dotgnu.info], with everybody who already knows what everybody else is doing. And in some selfish way, my friends are more important to me than the internet.
Sad, but true.
Interesting... (Score:5, Insightful)
One thing that bothers me is how Hitwise gets its data...
http://www.stateofthemedia.org/2010/online_sidebars_backgrounders [stateofthemedia.org]
So what does that mean? Are they analyzing DNS queries? Are they analyzing raw IP addresses? Are they analyzing raw HTTP headers? And I'd like to know more about what ISPs are signed up for this. Is it a statistical significant portion of them, or is it only a few here and there... Do those providers use high speed, mid speed or dialup connections? These are the kinds of questions that need answering to know if the conclusions that they draw are indeed valid, or if this isn't just a marketing stunt for the company...
People still visit google.com? (Score:5, Insightful)
When I need to search for something, I put the search terms into the URL bar and Google Chrome automatically sends me to the answer page for the search query. Sometimes it even takes me straight to a Wikipedia article.
Search isn't dead, it's just transparent.
Re:The Stripmall Effect (Score:4, Insightful)
So fall out of touch with them. There is nothing social about social networks.
Re:WTF? (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, as the Internet gets more popular, the average technical ability of the users will decrease, and it will be used less often, overall, as a research tool for people looking for information about development/physics/whatever, and more for entertainment (watching tv/movies, listening to music etc).
Re:WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually they're probably googling Facebook.com instead of just typing it in the address bar. I've seen people do stuff like that. Hell, I always just google "urban dictionary" rather than type in urbandictionary.com..
Besides, by the very nature of facebook you will be navigating around a lot more looking at photos and such, whereas with google you often just need to have the main page, and one page of results. Admittedly if you're browsing for porn or similar you also probably will go through several pages of photos/results.
What do they do there? (Score:4, Insightful)
Is it only me who knows that what people do on Facebook is more of gossip spreading than anything really useful?
Re:WTF? (Score:4, Insightful)
Pretty much. People learn what sites they like.
I spend a decent amount of time at Slashdot, several other message boards, my Gmail account, Wikipedia, and Facebook. Another significant chunk of my monthly usage is tied to downloading P2P content, podcasts, and online gaming - all have separate non-web interfaces.
In the end, I know a lot of where I want to go, and I can go there these days without needing to search for it. Don't get me wrong I still Google plenty, but it's not 1995 when every time I want to do something on the web I need to go searching for it.
Shit methodology there, guys! (Score:5, Insightful)
So, you're counting all of Facebook's assets -- including Farmville! -- while only looking at Google's core.
Sloppy and lazy. You guys should be proud of putting this on Slashdot.
Re:Shit methodology there, guys! (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly... Google forces all its international visitors by default into google.de, google.fr, google.es, etc.
WTF is this, Straw man 2.0? (Score:2, Insightful)
Social networks are anti-social. The status update was invented to massage the ego of the user, and the shear mass of trivia people spew out, blocks real interaction.
Drop the anti-social networks, and you will have less unsigned int friends, but more time to spend with your real friends. (If it makes you feel better you can still write how many friends you have on the wall in sharpie)
There are also better tools than facebook, twitter etc, to keep connected with a small non-broadcasting oriented group.
if you need a social network (Score:5, Insightful)
to keep up with your friends, they aren't really your friends
facebook is for ACQUAINTANCES, not true friends, even if the word you use for an acquaintance is "friend" (which makes sense to promote the word "friend" to the realm of the more dispersonal, for the sake of corporate level public relations, which is how some people run their lives)
the point is that a true friendship is its own reward. you actually commit real work and maintenance to see them because you want to do that. if it feels like a lot of effort to do that with someone, then in emotional honesty, they aren't really a true friend anymore. as soon as someone is unimportant enough to you that you slag them off to your fake corporate public relations face, aka, facebook, they have ceased to be your friend. just admit it and move on
all facebook is is a giant mask, a bit of fakery, that requires you to constantly maintain it, as long as having a fake public face is important to you for whatever reason. facebook is turning our social lives into emotionally dead corporate facades of shallow fakery
so for a little bit of genuine, psychologically healthy friendship, stop running your private life the same way a corporation runs a public relations department. facebook users, try this: the next time you make a new friend, someone you sense could be or you want them to be a close friend, make a pact with them to "keep it off the radar"
off of facebook, off of tweets, etc. when you want to socialize with them, socialize with them directly. make your emails and phone calls terse things to actually just arrange meet up times in which real socialization actually takes place
then you will know what it is like to actually have a friend
i'd rather have two or three friends like that than 200 to 300 acquaintances on facebook, that you dutifully and exhaustively maintain a corporate mask for. but inside, no one knows you and you don't know anyone else. for those of us addicted to facebook, life has become an emotionally unsatisfying slog through fake masks of constant shallow empty cheerfulness
go off the internet, make a real friend, lose the corporate pr department
Facebook knows more than that. (Score:4, Insightful)
In other news... (Score:3, Insightful)
More people read the TV Guide than Yellow Pages.
Re:Google is aware of this (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, they want to be your portal to all of human knowledge; the internet is a means, not an ends.
I don't think that they view pulling people into Buzz or Wave as properties as a major strategic goal, they want to use Buzz and Wave properties as showcases for the underlying open protocols (Wave Federation Protocol, PubSubHubbub, etc.) so that more third party vendors will use those open, easy-to-federate-with protocols, and Google can connect to, index, search, and present them.
Loss for Privacy and the Open Internet (Score:2, Insightful)
Say what you will about Google, but its level of evil is dwarfed by Facebook's.
*You can use much of Google without logging in, even without cookies or Javascript. Try that with Facebook.
*Google gets criticized for privacy bugs in Buzz, but Facebook is entirely based on privacy violations
*Google pioneered reasonable Internet ads (text ads). Though they later added other kinds of ads, Google showed it's possible for websites to earn revenue without being totally obnoxious. Facebook ads are evil incarnate.
*Google is all about pointing people towards the World Wide Web. Facebook is about keeping people in a walled garden.
*Google's birth story is 2 geeks building a better mousetrap. Facebook was conceived in privacy-impinging, account-hacking, contract-abrogating, trust-violating sin. New developments serve to confirm these initial trajectories.
http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/07/234204/Facebook-Founder-Accused-of-Hacking-Into-Rivals-Email [slashdot.org]
if you work 11 hour days (Score:3, Insightful)
then your only true friend is your job
whether you disbelieve or dislike or protest this fact is besides the point. its simply objectively the truth about the quality of your life
you don't work 11 hour days and have rich friendships outside your job. its simply not possible, unless they are with people at your job
which is fine: plenty of people have traded in their quality of life in order to get ahead in their careers, if only temporarily. but you need to admit what you are doing to yourself, and stop fooling yourself otherwise: your social life has been decimated, and plenty of people you call "friends" are at this point only acquaintances, no matter what you say otherwise
Re:if you need a social network (Score:3, Insightful)
To try to make it seem like that is somehow anti-social and I don't have real friends is moronic. I don't maintain some sort of fake personality. I'll throw up a link or something if I think the people I know will enjoy it and that's about it.
Stop being such a judgmental prick. My "real" friends that I hang out with every weekend are on facebook. It is just an easy way to share things with them. Sometimes they organize events through facebook (like disc golf outings).
If you don't like it, fine, don't use it. But there isn't anything screwed up with people who do and find it useful.
And don't you find it ironic you are telling people to get off the Internet when you are on Slashdot posting all day?
And for the love of all that is good, learn how to use capital letters at the beginning of sentences!
Re:and i agree with you 100% (Score:3, Insightful)
It sounds like you're arguing with a strawman instead of the people responding to your posts.