Social networking website Facebook continues to grow and surpass all expectations. In the week ending 13th March it became the most visited website in the US, getting more hits on its home page than even Google’s search engine! This is a grow of some 185% over the same week last year compared to Google’s 9% grow over the same period. Facebook understandably reached the number one position over the Christmas holidays and the the March 6th and 7th weekend and is clearly on a roll.
Research company Hitwise.com also claim that Google and Facebook now account for 14% of all US internet access. The Hitwise figures for all Google sites which include Maps, YouTube, Gmail etc account for around 11% of US visist last week with Yahoo sites accounting for around 12% and 7% for Facebook.
This clearly demonstrated that the web is moving from a search and discover surfing tool into a more social networking one and Facebook has clearly taken the pole position over its many rivals. The question now is whether its popularity is sustainable. The effort its users are investing in posting their details, connecting and communicating would indicate that it can only grow. The investment in its growth is not from within but clearly from its members. Will such a service become a true social hub which usurps the twitters and negates much email as we know it today? Are we finally seeing the true social network evolve by organic means? Its interesting that we still see social networking as a service alongside and competing with others but not as the service supported by others. The one other question is what the relationship will be between the app world and the social network world?
Facebook is now beginning to cash in on its success and this year its estimated revenues are between $1bn to $1.5bn. This may appear to be very small in comparison to Google’s last year’s revenues of $23.7bn, but it’s a great start and heading only one way. Google has launched its own social network site ’Buzz’ but has already had many questioning whether its safe to put all your personal, social, search details into one company whose business is about exploiting information through advertising.
See comments for links to stories about MySpace
3 comments:
Martyn - can you post a link to the original data? I'd like to take a look. I'm not sure I draw the same conclusions that you do. I never visit the google home page anymore because I have an igoogle account and because on all the new browsers there is a permanent search box into which I put search terms - though this uses google. I also use Google chrome on one machine and in it you can type search terms straight into the url box. Consequently many people might be using google search without going anywhere near the google home page.
Chris sorry i thought i had linked to Hitwise ( i have now)
Martyn
http://weblogs.hitwise.com/heather-dougherty/2010/03/facebook_reaches_top_ranking_i.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+hitwise%2Fus+%28Hitwise+Intelligence+US%29
http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/16/code-advisors-absolutely-definitely-not-working-with-myspace-on-a-spinoff/
tells that NewsCorp is definitely not selling MySpace
http://www.businessinsider.com/open-secret-myspace-is-for-sale-and-rupe-wants-700-million-2010-3
Silicon Valley insider thinks different
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