Historic overtaking Facebook over Google in the United States. The social network shows record breaking visits for the first time .It has exceeded the most popular search engine in the world with 7.07% of browsers (against 7.03% of Google). Overtaking was certified by the research firm Hitwise, dating back to last week.
The figures were released today by the Financial Times. In the week of March 7 to 13, Facebook has reached the figure of 7.07% of the audience on the Internet in the United States, against 7.03% for the search. And if anecdotal gap seems at first glance, it is rather historic. You should know that last year, the social networking site represented only 2% of U.S. visits. Meanwhile, Google has grown only 1, 03 point.
Last year only 2% of surfers stars and stripes frequented Facebook. Leap -the newspaper on pink paper in the City – confirms that the network has become a vast social network, besides being a great field of research. And Google is fully aware both that launched last month its social network, Buzz, between the second controversy because many users threatens privacy.
In the world of Facebook users have doubled in a short time, rising from 200 million last April from 400 million in February. The Web surfers spent an average of 5 ½ hours on social networking sites in December 2009, ie 82% more than last year.
The big difference between Google and Facebook is on the advertising, confirming that the social network created by Marck Zuckenberg became the youngest billionaire in the world, has room to grow much larger.(Forbes reveled ) According to calculations by the FT, Facebook received annually from 1 to 1.5 billion dollars, while Google has exceeded 23 billion last year.
Controversy about privacy. According to The New York Times, some students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge have been able to guess, for example, with a success rate of 78%, if added to a profile on Facebook is part of a gay. Moreover, it was very difficult to steal, by entering search parameters automatically, the details of the U.S. Code of Social Security (the equivalent of our tax code) of some Facebook users, thus increasing the risk of identity theft, more and more common in USA.
Cooperation with law enforcement. For the American Department of Justice Finally, Facebook is more than cooperation between the social network, with security forces, responding promptly to their requests. Even in this case are looming controversy.
It must still put these figures in context. First, by recalling that the number of hits on Google.com does not include those on services such as Gmail or Google Maps, or on YouTube, which all belong to the search engine. Recalling further that the turnover of Facebook is estimated between 1 and 1.5 billion dollars this year, against 23.7 billion for Google. This does not detract from the exceptional growth of social networking site: in December 2009, U.S. Internet has indeed spent six and a half hours on Facebook, less than two hours and a half on Google.