Google is the only website that stands in the way of Facebook in becoming the most popular site in the United States. Web analytics firm Compete reports that Facebook surpassed Yahoo to become the second most-visited website in the country.
In January, Facebook attracted nearly 134 million unique visitors in while Yahoo’s traffic declined to 132 million unique visitors. Google leads the pack with 147 million unique visitors.
Figures grabs the eyeballs, but for some time. On the attention front, Facebook is second to none. The site found that Facebook user spent 11.6% of all their internet time on Facebook as compared to 4.25% and 4.1% of their time on Yahoo and Google respectively.
Just a year back, Facebook had a little less than 70 million unique visitors. Facebook has enjoyed explosive growth over the last year with its user base touching 400 million mark world wide. Almost 50% of these users logs on to the site each day.
Questions like will Facebook be able to catch Google or how long will it take to go past Google remains to be seen. But, with the recent launch of Google Buzz, the number 1 spot might be a hard chase.
The staggering usage growth of Facebook continues unabated as the company achieves yet another milestone – 100 million U.S. unique visitor in November. Accoridng to comScore, this is the first time the social networking site has exceeded that monthly mark.
Just recently, Aol celebrated its re-emergence as an independently-traded company. It was the fourth largest Website in the U.S. until last month. Comscore data for November, 2009 shows that Facebook went past Aol with 102.9 million unique visitors in the U.S., against Aol’s 99.7 million. The other leaders are Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google with 130, 160 and 168 million U.S. visitors respectively.
On a global basis, Facebook already passed Aol back in Febuary 2009 to become the fouth largest site worldwide. With the current pace of Facebook, it might not take long to catch up Microsoft, Yahoo, or Google.
How long do you guys think Facebook will take to become the largest Website in U.S.?
[Source: Washington Post]
Yahoo Inc. is getting friendlier with Facebook if the news are to go by.
The two companies are in an expanded partnership announced Wednesday, which will enable Yahoo users with Facebook accounts to blend material from the two web sites without having to leave one site for the other.
This move will deepen the bond established when Yahoo home pages began presenting a glimpse of Facebook updates.
The current deal will intergrate the Facebook Connect service across yahoo, which will allow users to see their Facebook streams on yahoo’s email, Flickr, news, sports and finance sites. On the flip side, personal meterial from Yahoo such as e-mail, movie reviews, and photos can be more easily share on Facebook. Users will also be able to view and update status messages from Yahoo.
These tools are scheduled to be activated somewhere in the first half of 2010.
“As the place where over 500 million people visit every month, Yahoo!’s goal is to bring together social experiences from across the web, and provide one place for people to access information and stay in touch with the people they care about most,” Jim Stoneham, vice president of Communitites for Yahoo! wrote in a blog.
[Source: Associate Press , Yodel Anecdotel blog ]
The race to the top and and the final list of most searched terms of 2009 didn’t came as a shock, but was more of a thriller. Michael Jackson’s untimely death in June has topped year-end search lists from both Google and Yahoo.
The search companies released their annual lists on Tuesday as an effort to provide a cultural snapshot of what held the public’s interest over the past year. Jackson topped both Google’s fastest-rising and Yahoo’s overall searches.
“As millions of fans said goodbye to the King of Pop, Michael Jackson led the list of our top 10 fastest rising queries across the globe. And a new star was born, too – quirky pop singer Lady Gaga became a search sensation the world over,” wrote Google in their December 1, Zeitgeist blog post.
Michael Jackson tops Google’s list of fastest rising global searches in 2009. The pop star is followed by social networking site, Facebook and its invite-only Spanish social networking rival, Tuenti. This top 10 list includes:
1) Michael Jackson
2) Facebook
3) Tuenti
4) Twitter
5) Sanalika
6) New Moon
7) Lady Gaga 
Windows 7
9) Dantri.com.vn
10) Torpedo Gratis
While Facebook and Twitter well known social-networking sites, two more social-networking sites managed to get themselves in the list; Spain’s Tuenti and Turkey’s Sanalika. The two other websites that made to the list are the Vietnamese portal dantri.com.vn and Portuguese SMS website Torpedo Gratis.
Yahoo’s list was also headed by Michael Jackson in the top place with the list as follows:
1) Michael Jackson
2) Twilight
3) WWE
4) Megan Fox
5) Britney Spears
6) Japanese anime character Naruto
7) American Idol
8)Kim Kardashian
9)NASCAR
10) and online role-playing game Runescape.
Yahoo said the dominance of pop culture in the searches shows that the internet is being used largely for entertainment purposes.
Many people login to facebook with the help of search engines, primarily Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask, and AOL. Search engines help us find answers to information, but they can also help us get to websites without typing URLs. For example, type in “facebook login“ into Google and you can find FacebookLogin.net on the front page as the third result. Users all around the world can type in “facebook login“ into Google and then click on the link for FacebookLogin.net instead of having to type in double-u double-u double-u dot facebook login dot net.
