It has been announced by Hitwise that between March 7th and March 13th 2010 social networking site Facebook overtook search engine powerhouse Google in terms of number of visits in the US, making it the single most visited website in the United States between those dates. Although seemingly just another stat which proves nothing other than the circumstantial trend of that period: it is in fact a massive insight into the changing way in which we use the internet.

This switch in number one spot from Google to Facebook does not mean that the famous search engine is in decline (their market share was up 9% on the same period in 2009) but more so that social networking is growing in popularity at an incredible rate. The large market share of search engines is easily explained: as they serve as a gateway to discovering other websites and are often set as homepages. The vast majority of visits to social networks however are purely to access the information contained on the site itself or as a means of communication and inter-personnel social activity. As such it can be asserted that it is not necessarily the case that one site is more popular than another, but that the manner in which individuals use the internet is beginning to change: which is a much bigger deal.

The early incarnations of the internet were built around newsgroups and other means of sharing a wealth of information with like-minded or interested parties. With the rapid growth in the number of people using the internet came rapid growth in the number of different applications of the worldwide web. Throughout this period of flux the primary use continued to be as a tool for accessing information, hence the sustained popularity of search engines. This recent news however could well be indicative of the beginning of a phase when non-email communication usurps information sharing as the main purpose for instances of online activity.

Drifting further into the world of conjecture, there could potentially be implications of the rise of social networking sites which have a heavy bearing on offline as well as online activity. Does a rise in interaction via the internet for instance, mean reduced emphasis and reduced prevalence of face to face communication? Although a possibly far-fetched assumption, the fact that this prospect can be legitimately considered as feasible is certainly a concern in itself and something which cannot realistically be monitored.


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