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.
quit cold turkey sometime last week (Score:5, Interesting)
Meh, I only went to facebook regularly because I got addicted to some of the crappy clicky games (MafiaWars and Starfleet Commander). But at some point just this month, I finally stopped feeding the urge to maintain those things... it was eating a lot of quality time out of my personal time in mornings and evenings. I pretty much avoid MMORPGs for the same reason.
The signal-to-noise ratio of most of those social networking sites have plummeted, so I rarely pay much attention to them anymore. The feeds are dominated by a handful of people who post all the time. So queue up the next big thing... or actually maybe the older sites like LiveJournal with actual content, and not just grey connective tissue. Clicky clicky linky linky can still get old and tired.
Re:The Stripmall Effect (Score:3, Interesting)
While you made some great points, you're about two years too late:
http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/chris-dannen/techwatch/internet-and-strip-mall-effect [fastcompany.com]
Google is aware of this (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What comparison? (Score:3, Interesting)
This is feeding into the ongoing narrative about the "social web" being the future of the web. "Passively" using the web to research things on your own is out - it's all about building social networks to get status updates on family members you don't like talking to in real life and, I don't know, playing Farmville. Note that the CNN link is in the "CNN Money" area of their website - meaning that they're already viewing the narrative as "business vs. business." Google's business model is out, Facebook's business model is in. Throw your money at Facebook and Facebook clones because search is dead, social networking is the new hotness. Nobody - and I mean nobody - ever got rich following the advice of CNN Money. They're mandate seems to be to spin out easily digestible narratives with slightly sensational headlines to grab advertising eyeballs.
Re:Interesting... (Score:5, Interesting)
They're analyzing whatever they can find so they can make up a headline "Facebook attracting more visitors than google.com" so you'll actually read it and discover it's complete tripe, but only after having seen a few ads that they get paid for.
I know when I search on Google, I go to Google.com, enter my search criteria, and then start poring through the results. When I've found what I wanted, I move to the sites that have what I want. So Google gets maybe 10 "hits", 100 if you count each page element my browser requests as a "hit".
When I go on Facebook, I'll read updates, sometimes post replies, etc. Facebook also has a much more complex page with a lot more elements. So depending on their measurement of "visits", just going to Facebook might be anywhere between 20-30 hits per brief visit to thousands of them if you count each request.
But you looked at their ads, didn't you? Their statistics served their purpose.
Quality vs quantity, traffic vs reach (Score:3, Interesting)
Even if google had half the traffic of facebook it still would trump it: google knows what you are looking for in that moment so it is able to target advertisement better. Facebook on the other hand generally only knows that you are tending to your pigs in farmville, at the moment.
Even if facebook had twice traffic, it still is an easy bet that google has more reach (as a greater % of internet users access it). Just think about age/professional profiles: you know everyone uses google. You know lots of people don't use and don't care for facebook.
Comment removed (Score:2, Interesting)