A study of the company comScore, the worldwide leader in measuring the digital media, quoted by Daily Business, showed that the Internet users in the United States spend more time on Facebook than on all the platforms that Google acquired in time. Attention, the comparison is between a site and many other Websites.
Thus, in August 2010 on Facebook, the Americans spent 41.1 million minutes, which means 10% of the navigation time, while the sites owned by Google (including YouTube and Gmail.com) were used for only for 39.8 million minutes, or 9.6% of the online time.
Probably because when you read an e-mail, you do not spent have an hour, like you do when you play FarmVille. But there are cases of course, when you keep your Gmail page opened, so that you can see when somebody sends you a new message. But this happens rarely with the home users and the companies usually have e-mails according to their company name. So, if you work for a firm called Lkjhg, the name is selected purely by chance, your e-mail could be sandy@lkjhg.com.
Meanwhile, Yahoo sites have accumulated 37.7 million minutes, which represent 9.1% of the navigation time. The study reveals the growing of the interest for social platforms, within the context in which only a year ago the Internet users have accessed Facebook only for 5% of the time spent for online browsing. In 2007, Facebook had 2% of the time spent online, Google sites had 4% and Yahoo 12% of the total.
The popularity of social platforms like Facebook has grown so much lately that another study shows that the employers seek information about potential employees before they call them to the interview. The U.S. research company Compete Inc. ordered a study that showed that the links posted by users on the Facebook social network bring more traffic than a simple search on Google.
Thus, the information selected and displayed by friends, family and other acquaintances make Facebook a true force in terms of Internet traffic. The experts believe that platforms just like Facebook could become in the future search engines. Facebook ranks among the four largest distributors of information on the Internet after Google, Yahoo and MSN, according to a study by Hitwise.
In the classification drawn up by the market research company Hitwise is observed an evolution of Facebook Platform in 2009 by 2.5%. The progress is due to the tendency of the people to linger more time on social networks. “In an era when news circulate quickly, friends are often the best filters to see the most significant information”, said a spokesman for Facebook, Malorie Lucich.
Facebook users have the possibility to create new channels of personalized news and read newspaper articles from the Wall Street Journal within the social network. These features could make Facebook an important pawn in the field of news.
