Facebook beats Google to become top US site
Updated on 17 March 2010
In a landmark victory for social networking Facebook overtakes internet giant Google last week to become the most visited website in the US.
Figures by Hitwise released show that last week Facebook received 7.07 per cent of all internet traffic, edging just ahead of the web's most powerful internet search engine on 7.03 per cent.
It is the first time Facebook has held onto such a lead for an entire week.
Hitwise director of research Heather Dougherty, hailed an "important milestone."
Facebook enjoyed a massive 185 percent increase in visits in the same period, compared to the same week in 2009.
Visits to search engine home Google.com increased only nine percent in the same time, although those figures don't include visits to Google property sites such as the popular Gmail email service, YouTube and Google Maps.
Facebook's membership worldwide has doubled in the last year to 400 million users, 133 million in America.
Joe Rospars, who was personal advisor to Barak Obama on digital media during his election campaign, told Channel 4 News he believed there was a change in internet utilisation.
"For a long time we've had a trend of people seeking out searched information on the internet and what we are seeing with the emergence of Facebook and sites like Twitter…is that people are looking for socialised information and news and topics in the culture and society but also information about their friends that are socialised and curated by their friends and neighbours and communities," he said.
"Also, just as importantly, people are looking to participate in that and curate information and pictures and video for their friends. People are being producers in this new socialised information as well as consumers.
"We've seen this in the political campaigns as well as folks have transformed from merely searching out information to actively becoming more substantially participating in those campaigns and causes."
Rospars said that social networking sites had a duty to protect members by integrating substantial privacy and security settings.
"Everyone, whether its on Facebook or any of the other sites, need to take a hard look at the privacy settings and who you accept as your friend and what not because it's not just the government, there are lots of folks who may wan to gain access to your information."
